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BLM proposes changes to NE NPR-A leasing plan Preferred alternative would open more acres for leasing, change stipulations from prescriptive to performance-based Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
The area available for oil and gas leasing in the northeast planning area of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska would be expanded under a proposal announced June 8 by the Bureau of Land Management.
And, says the agency’s Alaska head, by changing from 79 prescriptive stipulations to performance-based stipulations — and adding more consultation with North Slope residents — development which does take place will be done in ways which meet management objectives, such as protecting caribou migration.
The change to performance-based stipulations, BLM Alaska State Director Henry Bisson said at a June 8 press briefing, “gives us the flexibility to be more stringent if we need to or to work with industry to come up with alternative ways to meet those objectives, and so we’ve gone to a more performance-based approach.”
As an example, he said, there are three stipulations among the 79 in the 1998 Northeast NPR-A record of decision which deal with pipelines and caribou, and they all require the pipelines to be five feet from the ground.
But when BLM looked at the objective, he said, which is to permit caribou to migrate “without being impeded by petroleum production facilities — they need to get under the pipelines, they need to get around the area, and the subsistence users on the North Slope need to be able to do the same thing to go hunt caribou,” the agency found that five feet is not high enough.
So the new management objective says that before permanent facilities are allowed to be constructed, BLM needs “to be assured that caribou can migrate through the area, and we said that the current standard is pipelines have to be seven feet — two feet higher than they currently are.” More high oil potential areas to be offered At present, only 56 percent of areas with high potential for oil and gas are available for leasing in the northeast NPR-A. BLM’s proposed alternative would allow leasing on 75 percent of areas with high potential for oil and gas, opening the area closest to the Barrow Arch to leasing.
“Virtually all of the oil that has been produced … on the North Slope, has come from within 25 miles of the Barrow Arch,” Bisson said. And in the northwest NPR-A lease sale June 2, he noted, the bulk of the leases sold were within that 25-mile radius of the Barrow Arch.
Some 600 million barrels of oil are economically recoverable under acreage offered in the existing northeast plan at a $30 per barrel crude oil price, but 2.1 billion barrels would be economically recoverable under Alternative B, the agency’s preferred alternative, Bisson said.
The existing plan for NPR-A northeast could result in 60,000 barrels of oil production per day, but under the preferred plan, “we estimate that there would be likely about 200,000 barrels of production per day,” reducing the cost of imported oil by some $2 billion a year.
But, he said, “we also recognize the significance of the subsistence values and wildlife values that exist on the North Slope, and we’re attempting to balance our plan to provide for oil and gas development while protecting those resources.” Protected area 213,000 acres The agency’s preferred alternative would keep 213,000 acres of “the most sensitive goose molting habitat” unavailable for oil and gas leasing. This area, Bisson said, is about nine townships north of Teshekpuk Lake.
“That area has actually been set aside from oil and gas leasing since the early ‘80s. During the first Reagan administration, that area was set aside as being too sensitive for oil and gas leasing activities to be conducted,” he said, but was expanded in the mid-1990s to about 600,000 acres.
Some protections have been expanded in the proposed alternative.
“We are also proposing to expand no surface occupancy requirements to include all of the deepwater lakes south of Teshekpuk Lake, not just the ones that exist in the current plan… we have protected substantially more lakes than were protected by the existing plan,” Bisson said, and no-surface occupancy restrictions along an additional river, the Tingmiaksiqvik, “which was not protected by the existing plan.”
The Native community, he said, did not want BLM to change the buffers at Fish and Judy creeks, “and we are not,” Bisson said. Consultation with the Native community under the existing plan is required “only for activities that occur at Fish Creek and Judy Creek, and we are going to require consultation for virtually all of the activities that we do in the planning area.”
Bisson said this provision would be identical to what BLM is requiring in the northwest planning area.
“So we’re going to be requiring more communication, more discussion with the folks on the North Slope before activities occur on the ground, including the whaling folks up there as well.”
BLM’s preferred alternative is “B”. The proposal also includes a no action alternative, which would make no changes from the 1998 record of decision, and an alternative which would open the entire northeast NPR-A to leasing.
The amendment is available on the agency’s web site at www.ak.blm.gov.
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