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Science and science fiction Study is modeling exercise that looks at affects of different kinds of change — including ANWR oil development — on Arctic communities Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
Economist Arlon Tussing has developed a set of scenarios for petroleum development in the eastern Alaska Arctic around and on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
But in a Jan. 21 presentation to the Anchorage chapter of the International Association of Energy Economics, Tussing stressed that the scenarios are not meant to be predictive.
“I want to sit around the campfire, pass the pipe and tell stories,” he said. “Because what I have to say here is not an analysis. It’s not a prediction. It’s not a program.” Model looks at change in Arctic What it is, said Sharman Haley of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage, is part of a National Science Foundation funded study, “Sustainability of Arctic Communities.” The study, begun in 1995, is a modeling exercise that looks at the affects of different kinds of change on communities within the range of the Porcupine caribou herd in Alaska and Canada.
The study has participation from senior researchers at institutions in the United States and Canada and participation from partner communities — three in the Canadian Arctic and Arctic Village in Alaska, said Haley, who is development scenario leader for the project.
Project goals, she said, “were to combine science and local knowledge and think about the future of Arctic communities and to work with the communities to understand how local policies might affect the future.”
The entire model, which will be available this summer, allows testing of different change scenarios. Haley said that three sets of scenarios are being built into the model now: climate change, oil development and tourism. Oil development only potential commercial activity Tussing said that he did not believe that ANWR development was going to happen because “…development in that region requires federal legislation. And as far as I’m concerned, the probability of federal legislation opening petroleum development in the wildlife refuge is very small. There is essentially no national constituency for opening it up. And there is a widespread national constituency, present in practically every congressional district … of people who are — rightly or wrongly — strongly opposed to it.”
So why has Tussing developed scenarios of ANWR oil development? Because in the area of the study, he said, there are no major commercial developments except North Slope oil. The only potential for large-scale commercial activity in the area of the study, east of the Canning River, “would be ANWR and an attempt to develop it.”
To operate a model where human activity, wildlife, the climate and life within the area of the model are affected by commercial activity, “all we’ve really got in terms of a plausible scenario is a further move of the commercial petroleum development that’s occurred in the central Arctic eastward and so the scenario’s centered mainly on what happens in ANWR.”
Tussing said the scenarios of ANWR development “are on the order of science fiction… They’re products of imagination in that none of them is likely to occur the way we say.” But, he said, “I try to make the story as consistent as is practicable… with what is known of geology, the engineering, economics, the law, the politics of the situation.” Three development scenarios Three scenarios have been developed for the model, Tussing said.
The first focuses along the northwest corner of ANWR, where there are discovery wells practically on the border and where the U.S. Geological Survey has assessed the probability of the existence of commercially recoverable hydrocarbons.
“Our story starts out,” he said, “with a continuation of the activity that has been occurring and a continuation of the movement of industry activity from Prudhoe Bay eastward right up against the Canning River and all around into the federal offshore and the state offshore abutting ANWR...”
Because there have been discoveries so close to the western edge of ANWR, the possibility exists, Tussing said, that production from wells on state land would drain oil from the adjacent federal land within the coastal plain of ANWR. So in the first scenario, he said, the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior goes to Congress and gets authorization to execute drainage leases. Second scenario The second scenario, Tussing said, assumes the successful development and oil production along the margins of the coastal plain of ANWR and drainage of oil under ANWR included in the first scenario and adds some leasing and surface operations within the 1002 area, including on Arctic Slope Regional Corp. leases. Activity would include the remainder of the Canning delta and Native mineral property near Kaktovik. There would be no permanent roads, processing facilities or trunk pipelines within the coastal plain.
Tussing stressed that he didn’t think ANWR development was going to happen, but suggested that for purposes of scenario two, we could “perhaps conceive of a political coalition that wants to do good things for Native Americans and who else is a better candidate for beneficiary (than ASRC)?” Infrastructure a political matter The question of infrastructure arose, Tussing said, and “some of the people we dealt with thought that it was just taken for granted that there would have to be a permanent road across the area and ultimately connecting it to Prudhoe Bay.”
The study team, he said, wasn’t convinced it was technically necessary.
“It was obvious in each local development there was a tradeoff between having road access all the way into the supply centers or having a road paralleling the trunk pipeline but that it was a matter of cost and certainly was within the area of public policy discretion. And we concluded that the decision as to whether there would be a large scale infrastructure development was not one that was driven by field economics but is going to be one that was going to be in the political arena and basically if there was going to be a permanent road, a jet-capable state airport, a development center, that it would be a political matter and it would be driven largely by local considerations.”
Tussing said he thought the prototype for infrastructure discussion would be the controversy over Alpine development, where the Nuiqsut village corporation, supported by the North Slope Borough, wanted a road connecting the village to Kuparuk and “the industry preference was no road.” Infrastructure, 1002 area leasing Because of interest in infrastructure, Tussing said, a scenario 2 high case was added with “a state highway across the potential development area to the Canning River, with a spur to Kaktovik, a state airport here in Kaktovik and a development center in which someone presumably (Kaktovik Inupiat Corp.) would build a hotel, warehouse facilities et al.”
In the third scenario, the entire 1002 area would be opened to leasing. The development model, he said, would be similar to that being proposed for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The scenario 3 high case includes development and commercial production of natural gas as well as oil. Kaktovik will be invited to join Tussing said that Kaktovik hadn’t wanted to participate in the original study.
“We invited Kaktovik to participate and it didn’t work out and we’re still hopeful that they will participate…. We lose a lot by not having Kaktovik in the study,” Haley said. She said that a renewal proposal is being drafted, “which means we’ll get a second chance for Kaktovik and some of the North Slope Borough communities to partner with us in the next phase of it.”
An introduction to the sustainability project can be found on the Internet at http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/projects/sustweb/nsf.htm.
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