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Alaska to lease offshore ANWR, MMS Beaufort Sea sale advances
Alaska to lease offshore ANWR, MMS Beaufort Sea sale advances
The state of Alaska said in late July that it will add tracts offshore the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Oct. 27 Beaufort Sea areawide oil and gas lease sale. The 26 tracts had been deferred in previous areawide lease sales.
In a late July legal notice the state Division of Oil and Gas said it had developed “a new mitigation measure to ensure that exploration, development and production activities within tracts 1 through 26 are conducted in a manner that prevents unreasonable conflicts between oil and gas activities and subsistence whale hunting.”
Under Mitigation Measure 18, the lessee has to consult with the North Slope Borough and the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission to discuss how the siting, timing and methods of proposed operations can be planned and carried out to avoid potential conflicts with subsistence whale hunting.
The state said this “consultation may include negotiating a conflict avoidance agreement.”
There will also be a state North Slope areawide lease sale in Anchorage on Oct. 27. Sealed bids must be received by the division by 4:00 p.m. (local time) on October 25.
The bidding method for both sales will be cash bonus, with a minimum bid of $10 per acre. North Slope lease terms will be seven years; Beaufort Sea leases will be both seven and 10 years, depending on location. For more details visit the division’s website, www.dog.dnr.state.ak.us/oil. MMS says no new concerns A new report by the U.S. Minerals Management Service says there are no new environmental concerns preventing a Beaufort Sea oil and gas lease sale from taking place next spring.
The proposed sale, tentatively scheduled for March 30, covers nearly 9.8 million acres off Alaska’s northern coast from the Canadian border to Point Barrow.
MMS has released an environmental assessment of the area that would be affected by the sale, determining there would be “no new significant impacts” besides those previously assessed.
MMS completed a comprehensive environmental impact statement of drilling in the Beaufort Sea two years ago, when it developed its five-year leasing plan, which includes three Beaufort sales.
The report released at the end of July was conducted to determine whether another evaluation was necessary because of new or changed information on the region’s birds, bowhead whales and subsistence hunters.
“Our view was that nothing had changed to make any new significant issues,” said John Goll, MMS Alaska regional director.
The assessment will be open to public comment for 30 days. A proposed notice of sale is scheduled to go out in October and a final notice of sale 30 days before the sale date.
In the most recent Beaufort Sea sale, last September, three companies bid more than $10 million for leases on 181,000 acres. Next year’s proposed sale covers the same territory. MMS proposes six alternatives to the plan, removing from the sale various areas used by subsistence whale hunters.
— The AP contributed to this story
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