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MMS issues Chukchi EIS Draft says only feasible way to export Chukchi gas is via North Slope pipeline Alan Bailey Petroleum News
It has been more than a year since the U.S. Minerals Management Service announced that it would evaluate a possible oil and gas lease sale in the Chukchi Sea outer continental shelf. The agency has now issued a draft environmental impact statement for a proposed lease sale in November 2007, as part of the MMS 2007 to 2012 five-year outer continental shelf leasing program.
The proposed sale would include 6,156 whole or partial blocks covering about 34 million acres. Excluded from the sale is a 15- to 10-mile coastal corridor, known as the polynya or spring lead. The polynya is critical to whale migration and subsistence hunting.
“The draft EIS analysis focuses on the potential environmental effects of activities related to the sale, including seismic surveying, and exploration, development and production activities in the sale area,” MMS said Oct. 17.
Not a decision document Fred King, chief of the MMS leasing activities section, told Petroleum News Oct. 16 that the draft EIS is part of an environmental analysis under the terms of the National Environmental Policy Act and is not a decision document.
“We evaluate our proposal which comes out of a five-year plan,” King said. “… This NEPA document is looking at what would happen if we had a sale in the Chukchi Sea.”
After a public comment period on the draft document and the completion of the EIS, the Secretary of the Interior will make a decision on the lease sale, King said. The cutoff date for public comments is Dec. 19.
World-class province Although oil and gas development in the daunting climatic and sea conditions of the Chukchi would present a major challenge, the region has long been known to have the potential to be a world-class oil and gas province — in February a new MMS assessment pointed to the possibility of 2.32 billion to 40.08 billion barrels of oil and 10.32 trillion to 209.53 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Chukchi Planning Area.
In assessing the possible environmental impacts of industrial activities beyond initial seismic surveys the agency assumed that exploration of oil and gas leases in the Chukchi would involve the drilling of seven to 14 exploration wells followed by the development of an initial 1 billion barrel oil field. It would not be economic to develop an initial field smaller than that, the agency said.
MMS also said that the only feasible way of exporting natural gas from the Chukchi would be via a gas pipeline transportation system from the North Slope and the draft EIS does not consider other means of exporting gas, such as the use of an LNG plant.
And King stressed that, in the absence of any information about where that 1 billion barrel field might be found, the assessment of environmental impacts in the draft EIS is somewhat general in nature. In the event of an actual oil find or the extension of oil industry activities beyond that initial major oil field, the terms of NEPA would require a further environmental assessment of the impacts on the affected areas of the Chukchi. And that assessment could trigger the need for another EIS.
Four alternatives Within the context of a potential 1 billion barrel field, MMS looked at four possible alternatives. The first alternative is to proceed with the lease sale as proposed, while the second alternative is to defer the sale. The third and fourth alternatives, based on recommendations from subsistence hunters and on a 1987 National Marine Fisheries Service Biological Opinion, involve deferring the lease sale in a corridor along the coastal side of the lease area — in effect, widening the polynya zone that is already excluded from the sale. Alternative three involves a 60-mile wide deferral zone, while alternative four involves a 25-mile wide deferral zone.
And in assessing the environmental impacts for the alternatives, MMS considered the effects both of routine industrial activities and of a large oil spill. Routine activities would include operations such as drilling wells, building oil facilities and operating oil production.
The draft EIS recognizes that routine activities would cause “some degree of disturbance, noise and discharges into the environment” and that “some potential significant effects … may occur.”
King emphasized that MMS would impose a set of standard mitigation measures on oil and gas activities, and that these measures would minimize any environmental impacts.
“I do not believe we are identifying any significant effects that would happen from our routine operations,” King said.
Impacts of an oil spill A large oil spill would, however, have significant effects. MMS estimated a probability of 33 to 51 percent of a large oil spill occurring during the entire life of that 1 billion barrel oil field — the agency defines a large spill to be equal to or greater than 1,000 barrels of oil. Then to analyze the possible impact of an oil spill the agency modeled a 1,500-barrel spill from an oil platform and a 4,600-barrel spill from a pipeline.
The draft EIS identifies the likely consequences of these types of oil spills, including the possibilities of bird mortality and loss of some marine mammals. But the draft EIS concludes that wide-scale adverse impacts from an oil spill are unlikely.
“While a large oil spill could cause some adverse effects and a number of potentially significant effects, we do not expect these effects to occur, because it is unlikely that a large oil spill would occur,” the draft EIS says. “Furthermore, an area affected by such a spill relative to the size of the Chukchi Sea decreases the likelihood that the resources would be widely contacted by the spill.”
King said that in the event of a company wanting to develop an oil field in the Chukchi, MMS would do another EIS. A further assessment of the oil spill risks at that point might result in additional, fine-tuned mitigation measures.
“We can be much more specific because at that point the company is giving us specific plans and we can evaluate those,” King said.
The no-action alternative The draft EIS said that the second alternative, in which the Chukchi lease sale would not take place, “would provide some protection to the environmental resources in the Chukchi Sea.” There would be no disturbance to the flora and fauna, and no risk of an oil spill.
But, this alternative would also eliminate the potential economic benefit of Chukchi oil development to the federal government, and to state and local government. Moreover, assuming that current U.S. oil consumption continues at its present level, failure to develop oil resources from the Chukchi would displace oil production and transportation to some other parts of the world and cause environmental impacts in those places.
“Imported oil imposes negative environmental impacts in producing countries and in countries along transportation routes,” the draft EIS says. “By not producing our own domestic oil and gas resources and relying on imported oil we are, from a global perspective at least, exporting a sizeable portion of the environmental impacts to those countries from which the U.S. imports oil or by which our oil is transported.”
The draft EIS says that this same line of reasoning applies to any oil not produced in the deferral corridors under the third and fourth alternatives.
For those two alternatives, the draft EIS says that the deferral corridors would reduce some of the environmental impacts of oil and gas development and “provide a measure of protection of the resources in the deferral area.” But the draft EIS concludes “the effects to the resources in the (whole) Chukchi Sea area … would be essentially the same as the effect of alternative one (holding a lease sale for the whole planning area).”
And the implementation of the deferral corridors would significantly reduce the probability of developing an economic oil field.
The draft EIS is available at www.mms.gov/alaska/ref/EIS%20EA/Chukchi_DEIS_193/DEIS_193.htm. Paper copies are available in libraries throughout the state. Paper copies and CD versions are also available from the Minerals Management Service in Anchorage (telephone (800) 764-2627). MMS has scheduled the following public hearings:
Wainwright, Monday Nov. 13 starting at 7 p.m. in the Robert James Community Center;
Point Lay, Tuesday Nov. 14 starting at 7 p.m. in the Point Lay Community Center;
Point Hope, Wednesday Nov. 15 starting at 7 p.m. in the Qalgi Center;
Barrow, Thursday Nov. 16 starting at 7 p.m. in the Inupiat Heritage Center; and
Anchorage, Wednesday Dec. 6 starting at 7 p.m. in the Centerpoint Building, 3801 Centerpoint Drive, First Floor Conference Room.
Comments on the draft EIS can be submitted on the MMS Public Connect web site at https://ocsconnect.mms.gov/pcs-public/ by email to [email protected] or sent to the Minerals Management Service, Leasing and Environment Office, 3801 Centerpoint Drive, Suite 500, Anchorage, AK 99503.
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