|
Trustees of Alaska protest Bristol Bay exploration license; Native owners cry discrimination
Alan Bailey & Kay Cashman
A non-profit environmental law firm filed a protest with the state of Alaska Sept. 27, stopping the clock on a Bristol Bay basin exploration license due to be issued to a company owned by Native elders from the Bristol Bay Region. The filing by Trustees of Alaska also resulted in the loss of an investor for Bristol Shores LLC, a company formed by the Native elders to generate a natural gas industry that would eradicate the poverty brought on by the decline of the Bristol Bay fisheries.
In its paperwork asking for the state to reconsider the best interest finding on the 329,113-acre exploration license around the community of Dillingham, Trustees listed its clients as Alaska Coalition, Cascadia Wildlands Project, Pamela A. Miller of Arctic Connections, and the Northern Alaska Environmental Center. Paintball attack of another color George Shade, president of Bristol Shores, said the Trustees filing has caused consternation and anger among Bristol Bay residents.
“We’re not taking it sitting down,” Shade told Petroleum News Oct. 10. “The impact on these remote areas is more severe than these guys realize ... this is flat discrimination — this is probably one of the biggest paintball attacks I’ve ever seen.”
Both Shade and Jere Allan, president of The Bay Group LLC, view the filing as a form of harassment.
The Bay Group, a management firm working for Bristol Shores, has been seeking private investors to fund gas exploration in the license area. Allan said that one investor has already pulled out of the project because of Trustees’ filing. That investor was just days away from putting money into the venture, Shade said.
“If they (potential investors) pull out, what you have done, it’s not only caused severe economic problems for Bristol Shores LLC, but you’ve caused severe problems for all of the indigenous peoples in the region, centering in Dillingham and going out,” Allan said. Concerns about depth of analysis Trustees attorney Vicki Clark told Petroleum News that her clients’ concerns center on the depth of the state’s analysis of the potential environmental impacts of the proposed developments.
“There was not an adequate analysis of the potential impacts of any kind of oil and gas development in the Bristol Bay area, particularly the area that they put out for a license,” Clark said.
Trustees request for reconsideration cites several concerns, including the importance of the Bristol Bay area as a wildlife habitat, as a salmon fishery and as a location for subsistence fishing and hunting.
Shade said that the indigenous people around Bristol Bay understand the environmental issues in the region and that they pay great attention to protecting the environment. He said that several years ago he himself formed a non-profit organization for raising environmental awareness in the Bristol Bay area.
Allan commented that the elders who co-own Bristol Shores are highly respected members of their community and that these elders place great emphasis on environmental protection. All of the owners of Bristol Shores have been or are fishermen, Allan said. “They’re very concerned about the environmental aspects of the operation and protecting the migrating routes of the animals as well as the migration of the salmon.”
Bristol Shores plans to spend some of the money earned from natural gas sales to clean up mercury and chemical pollution in the area.
“Our concerns are not just with our environmental movements but cleaning up the previous environmental violations — making it a nice place to live for our children and their children,” Shade said. The indigenous people did not cause the current pollution in the area, he said.
The company has also earmarked some of its future profits for educational and cultural support. License on hold, says Galvin Before the Trustees filed its request, Bristol Shores had 30 days from Sept. 7 to decide whether to accept the exploration license. Pat Galvin, petroleum land manager for the state Division of Oil and Gas, told Petroleum News the final finding for the license is now on hold pending reconsideration by the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.
“Once the commissioner makes a final determination on the request for reconsideration, assuming that the decision is to proceed with the license, then that would begin another 30 day (decision) period for Bristol Shores,” Galvin said. A world of possibilities Meantime, Bristol Shores is assessing the relative merits of joint venturing the exploration work versus having a major oil company carry out the exploration and development.
“We’re currently talking to a major integrated oil company,” Allan said.
Shade expects Bristol Shore’s profits to come initially from natural gas liquids sales — the company is looking at building an NGL plant at a convenient and suitable location.
Shade also talked about the possibility of exporting liquefied natural gas.
“You’ve got to understand, because of where we’re sitting … we virtually have the whole Asian market at our fingertips,” he said. Allan said they have already located potential markets.
“We are talking to a Japanese trading company, LNG Japan USA — they’re interested in all the LNG (liquefied natural gas) that we could get,” he said.
Bristol Shores will also allocate some of the gas for local use in the Bristol Bay area, to replace the use of diesel fuel in power plants, for example.
Shade also sees possibilities for piping natural gas to other parts of Alaska. He has already researched a route for a pipeline from Portage Creek near Dillingham to Bruin Bay on the Cook Inlet and has submitted his plan for this route to the state. From Bruin Bay that pipeline could connect with the pipeline systems in the Cook Inlet, he said.
There’s also a possibility of supplying gas to the Alaska Interior by building a pipeline north to McGrath and then, from there, down the Iditarod trail, Shade said.
He’s also investigating other clean forms of energy, such as gas-driven fuel cells.
| 