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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
March 2023

Vol. 28, No.12 Week of March 19, 2023

Court sides with feds on NPR-A data release

Finds AOGCC does not have right to release data filed with it by ConocoPhillips for National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska drilling

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason has found in favor of ConocoPhillips Alaska in a case the company brought against the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission over release of well data from the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

NPR-A is managed and leased by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management under federal law, but under Alaska law, wells are permitted by AOGCC, which releases well data after 25 months unless the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources finds that there is unleased land in the vicinity.

Under federal law, public release of well data occurs only when a lease is relinquished.

Gleason said in a March 8 decision that Alaska’s disclosure laws are preempted by federal law.

NPR-A

NPR-A, formerly Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4, was established in 1923, the court said, with the goal of assuring that the U.S. Navy’s ships would have adequate petroleum supplies. When the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries embargoed oil in the 1970s, that “established that the Nation had a need for oil that exceeded the needs of the Navy,” the court said, and in 1976 Congress enacted the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act, transferring NPR-A management to Interior. Initially, the NPRPA only allowed the federal government to explore, but the act was amended in 1980 by an appropriations rider which directed Interior to open NPR-A to private exploration and establish a competitive leasing program. The rider was codified in federal statute and governs NPR-A oil and gas leasing.

The rider directs that NPR-A lease sales will be based on bidding systems in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. The rider subjects information from NPR-A geological and geophysical exploration to the conditions of the oil and gas information program subsection of OCSLA, which has a provision providing for confidentiality of privileged or proprietary exploration information received by Interior and “expressly preempts” state or local laws providing for public access to that privileged information.

Separately acquired data

AOGCC requires well data as a condition of its drilling permits and its statutes and regulations require that the well data be kept confidential for 24 months after the 30-day filing period, but then the commission is required to make the data public unless the DNR commissioner finds that the data must be kept confidential because of unleased land in the vicinity.

ConocoPhillips said that when it provided the required well data to AOGCC is “included an express statement that the Well Data must be held confidential pursuant to federal law.” The company said the data provided to AOGCC was a subset of the data provided to BLM.

The court looked at the intent of Congress when it passed the NPRPA rider. Congress had requested a study to determine the best procedures in leasing, prior to enacting the rider, and the resulting report was issued in December 1979, the court said.

“The Rider cites to the Report, and it is thus reasonable to assume Congress relied upon the Report when drafting the Rider,” the court said.

The report said the government’s role in a private sector program in NPR-A would be similar to its role in managing OCS oil and gas operations, the court said, and compared an NPR-A leasing program to the OCSLA program. The report also makes clear the value to competitors of exploration information, and recommends that to maintain a competitive edge for companies that are exploring, exploration information should only be released after leases are relinquished.

The court found that based on the testimony it received, Congress “recognized the need to keep exploration information confidential in a private leasing program such as the one authorized by the Rider.”

The court found that state disclosure laws are an obstacle to what Congress intended to accomplish “and are preempted by the OCSLA Oil and Gas Information Program as incorporated into the NPRPA Rider.”






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