Green Blog: Caribou and Oil Companies to Share Alaska Petroleum Reserve

An Interior Department plan for the National Petroleum Reserve ? Alaska calls for half of its 23 million acres to be set aside for wildlife conservation, wilderness and recreation and for the rest to be opened to potential oil and gas development.

The plan, announced on Wednesday, allows for construction of pipelines across the reserve to carry oil and gas from the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off Alaska?s North Slope to the current Trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Shell began exploratory drilling off the coast this year but stopped before reaching oil-bearing zones because of weather and equipment problems.

Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, said the compromise plan for the vast petroleum reserve would allow significant oil and gas exploration without compromising the wild area?s natural values.

?A balanced approach will allow us to continue to expand our leasing in the N.P.R.-A., as we?ve done over the last three years, while protecting significant caribou herds, migratory bird habitat and sensitive coastal resources that are critically important to the culture and subsistence lifestyle of Alaska Natives and our nation?s conservation heritage,? Mr. Salazar said in a statement.

The blueprint allows for the exploitation of oil and gas resources on 11.8 million acres that are estimated to hold 549 million barrels of economically recoverable oil and 8.7 trillion cubic feet of economically recoverable natural gas.

So far only exploratory drilling has been conducted in the reserve, but in 2011 the Army Corps of Engineers granted permits to ConocoPhillips to begin the first commercial oil and gas production.

Environmental advocates praised the new plan, calling it a major step toward protecting virtually the entire reserve from commercial development.

?Secretary Salazar has taken a bold step to protect one of America?s wildest places from energy development,? said Charles Clusen, the Natural Resources Defense Council?s Alaska project director. He noted that the reserve was ?a globally important home? to caribou, grizzly bears, wolverines, wolves, shorebirds, waterfowl and ?exceptional densities of cliff-nest raptors? as well as polar bears, walruses and beluga whales.

?It has been a very long battle to bring meaningful protection to the Western Arctic Reserve ? over 40 years,? he added. ?Secretary Salazar?s decision today substantially advances wildlife and wilderness conservation.?

Senator Mark Begich of Alaska, a pro-oil Democrat, said the plan did not go far enough toward bolstering Alaska?s oil and gas production or ensuring a steady flow of oil through the state?s pipelines.

?I?m pleased we?re making progress developing the enormous oil and gas resources in Alaska?s Arctic,? Mr. Begich said in a statement. ?That development and oil transportation in N.P.R.-A. is a vital link in bringing Alaska?s offshore resources to market.

?But unnecessary barriers remain to making additional acreage available for leasing,? he said. ?I?ll keep up the full court press on the Obama administration over the next few weeks to make sure our state?s onshore and offshore resources can be delivered to TAPS and to market.? (TAPS refers to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.)

The Alaska oil reserve was originally designated the Naval Petroleum Reserve in 1923 by President Warren G. Harding. In 1976, Congress renamed it the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and transferred management responsibility to the Bureau of Land Management, a unit of the Interior Department. Roughly the size of West Virginia, it is the largest single tract of land managed by the federal government.

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/caribou-and-oil-companies-to-share-alaska-petroleum-reserve/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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