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Legislature passes ANWR resolution State lawmakers urge Congress to have another go at opening the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge for oil and gas development ALAN BAILEY Petroleum News
With a new Congress and a new administration in Washington D.C., the Alaska Legislature is trying yet again to have the federal government open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas development. An amended House joint resolution urging Congress to approve environmentally responsible oil and gas exploration, development and production in the ANWR coastal plain passed the Senate Feb. 22. Two days later the House concurred with the Senate changes. The resolution subsequently went to Gov. Bill Walker for his signature.
In addition to requesting the lifting of the ANWR oil and gas moratorium, the resolution recognizes the need to protect the Porcupine caribou herd that Native communities depend on as a subsistence resource; the need to use technical advances such as directional drilling to minimize the surface impact of oil and gas activities; the importance of the federal government pursuing alternative and renewable energy sources as well as opening the ANWR coastal plain for oil and gas; and the importance of the state receiving 90 percent of any ANWR oil and gas royalties, as specified at the time of Alaska statehood.
A long controversy The long-simmering controversy over potential oil and gas development in ANWR dates back to the formation of the refuge in 1980 as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Under the terms of that act, Congress set aside 1.5 million acres along the northern coast of the 19.5 million-acre refuge for possible future development. However, the opening for development of this designated area of the coastal plain, referred to as the 1002 Area, requires an act of Congress. And, despite numerous attempts, an appropriate statute has never passed both houses of Congress and obtained a presidential signature.
The appeal of the 1002 Area for oil and gas development is simple: The geology under the ANWR coastal plain is a continuation of the geology that hosts the productive oil fields of the central North Slope.
With little surface rock exposure, most of what is known about the subsurface of the area has been derived from seismic surveys conducted in the 1980s, and from rocks observed in the mountains of the Brooks Range to the immediate south. And, while there is no certainty over how much undiscovered oil and gas the 1002 Area may hold, it is clear that the area does host many of the major petroleum-bearing features found to the west.
In 1998 the U.S. Geological Survey conducted an assessment of the area, determining that the area may hold somewhere between 5.7 billion and 15.9 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil, with an estimated mean volume of 10.3 billion barrels.
But only one well has ever been drilled in the 1002 Area. This was the KIC well, drilled in 1985 and 1986 by Chevron and BP from surface land owned by Kaktovik Inupiat Corp., the Native village corporation for the village of Kaktovik. The findings from that well remain a commercial secret.
Meanwhile, ANWR has become something of a poster child for the environmental conservation movement. And the Gwich’in people of the Alaska Interior, worried about the potential impact of industrial activity on the Porcupine caribou herd, a major subsistence resource, have expressed opposition to oil development on the ANWR coastal plain.
Thus has emerged the multi-year standoff over ANWR development.
Efforts at opening The opening of the 1002 Area for oil development perhaps came closest in 1995, when Republican majorities in both the Senate and the House passed an act that would have allowed drilling. But President Bill Clinton vetoed that act.
The 2000s saw multiple attempts at opening the area. For example, in 2002 President George W Bush included the 1002 Area opening in an Energy Bill. But that effort died when most Senate Democrats and some Republicans opposed the measure. In 2003 the Senate, by a narrow majority, removed an ANWR development provision from a federal budget resolution.
In 2004, with Republicans in control of the House, the Senate and the White House, the ANWR debate emerged again. In 2005 the approval of ANWR drilling was again included in a federal budget bill, but was subsequently dropped following vociferous opposition. The opening of ANWR was also included in an energy bill that was introduced that year. However, the ANWR provisions were subsequently removed from the version of the bill that was eventually passed.
In an effort which came close to success, in late 2005 Sen. Ted Stevens inserted an ANWR provision into defense spending legislation. The provision would have allowed development in 2,000 acres of the coastal plain. However, after more than eight hours of behind-the-scenes wrangling, the Republican majority in the Senate failed to muster enough votes to prevent a Democratic filibuster - the legislation eventually passed without the inclusion of the ANWR provisions.
In 2008, following several years of frustration over the ANWR oil drilling issue, Senate Republicans announced that they were dropping the issue from consideration that year.
Wilderness designation? In 2010 attention switched to questions over whether wilderness designations should be extended into the 1002 Area, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service worked on a new ANWR conservation plan. This effort culminated in 2015 with an environmental impact statement, recommending that the whole of ANWR, including the 1002 Area, should be designated as wilderness, off limits to oil and gas development. President Obama subsequently wrote to Congress requesting the wilderness designation, although Congress did not act on that request.
In 2012 yet another bill allowing oil and gas leasing in the 1002 Area passed the Republican-led House of Representatives, only to be rejected by the Democratic controlled Senate.
State exploration plan In 2013 the Alaska administration of Gov. Sean Parnell tried a different tack, applying to the Department of the Interior for approval of an exploration plan involving a seven-year seismic acquisition and drilling program for the ANWR coastal plain. The governor pledged to ask state legislators for $50 million to help fund the program. The governor’s move came in response to the lack of an oil and gas development alternative in the new ANWR conservation plan that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service had been preparing. Following rejection by Interior of the exploration plan proposal, the state applied for a special use permit for a 3-D seismic survey.
The state claimed that under the terms of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, anyone could apply directly to Interior for acceptance of an exploration plan in ANWR. However, Interior refused consideration of the plan on the grounds that the agency’s authority to review plans of this type had expired in 1987, at which time Interior had filed a report on the oil and gas potential of the 1002 Area. The federal District Court in Alaska subsequently upheld Interior’s position.
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