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DNR receives funds for tundra travel research DOE funds two years of additional ground data gathering, development of computer model to determine North Slope winter access Patricia Jones Petroleum News Contributing Writer
The U.S. Department of Energy has approved $270,000 in research funding to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources to develop a computer model that will help regulators determine winter tundra travel periods on the North Slope.
“Our hope is to extend the winter work season … and to ensure the same or greater level of protection that we currently afford,” Harry Bader, DNR’s Northern Region land manager, told Petroleum News March 31. “The idea of the model is to give staff an additional tool to predict the ability of tundra to resist disturbance and allow for oil land gas exploration,” he told Petroleum News.
The DOE award was approved last month by the Fairbanks-based Arctic Energy Office of the National Energy Technology Laboratory. About $70,000 will go to DNR in 2003, with the remainder to be awarded from the 2004 fiscal year budget, said Brent Sheets, Arctic Energy Office representative.
“This is one of those things the oil companies couldn’t tackle because of credibility issues,” Sheets told Petroleum News.
Funding for the tundra travel model was granted without DNR researchers competing for a share of about $5.5 million in 2003 DOE funds for Alaska-based energy research projects.
“It is worth funding without going through any review process like that,” Sheets said. “We recognized it was a critical issue — it gets directly to the issue of addressing the decreasing number of days available for exploration on state lands.”
The study’s objective is to increase the exploration access window on the North Slope to at least 130 days per season, a goal that Bader said is “doable.” Revisiting tundra travel standards The computer model is designed to offer a scientifically based alternative to standards currently used by DNR to determine exploration and development access on North Slope tundra. Since the 1960s, state regulators have required that tundra be frozen at least 12 inches deep and have six inches of snow cover before travel is allowed.
“That is a subjective standard based on considerable anecdotal observation, but there’s been no attempt to quantitatively and systematically evaluate what the standard should be,” Bader said.
Using those criteria has resulted in a decrease in tundra travel days available to exploration crews on the North Slope. In 1970, regulators allowed tundra travel for 210 days — more than twice the 103 days allowed in 2002, Bader said.
“It’s been a fairly consistent downward trend, without much variation,” Bader said. “The best thing to happen is for a cooling trend to replace this warming trend.” Initial work started in 2002 DNR employees gathered field data during the last two winter seasons, thanks to $40,000 from reimbursable services agreements with the two North Slope oil field operators, Bader said.
The first field data were collected in 2002, when DNR employees accompanied Anadarko Petroleum Corp. seismic crews working in the Brooks Range Foothills. DNR employees measured 10 different environmental indicators at places where equipment drove on the tundra, including tussock and shrub disturbance, soil salinity, moisture and thaw depth.
Later that summer, crews re-measured the same factors in those areas, Bader said.
“Our goal is to identify what types and intensity of disturbance are tolerable and what aren’t,” he said. “No one has thoroughly investigated how these various attributes … affect the ability of tundra to resist disturbance.”
This winter, DNR conducted the same type of field data gathering at sites where ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. crews constructed ice roads. Bader said DNR will return to those sites this summer to collect follow-up data.
“DNR is not traditionally an agency that conducts its own research, so I’m very proud that this is signaling a proactive response to vexing problems,” Bader said.
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