Alaska Senator Offers Compromise Bill On ANWR Oil
Date: 02-Mar-09
Country: US
Author: Yereth Rosen
Alaska Senator Offers Compromise Bill On ANWR Oil Photo: US Fish and
Wildlife Service
The
coastal plain within the 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is
seen in this undated handout photo provided by the US Fish and Wildlife
Service Alaska Image Library.
Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service
ANCHORAGE - A bill introduced Friday by Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
would permit oil production in the ecologically sensitive Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, but only from directional wells that are drilled outside
the refuge's borders.
Murkowski, a Republican who first announced her plan last week during an
address to the Alaska legislature, characterized the bill as a compromise
that addresses environmentalists' concerns about impacts within the refuge
while allowing for some of the oil beneath it to be tapped.
"Everybody wins with this bill. America improves its energy security and the
conservation community is ensured that there will be no visible impact on
the refuge," she said in a statement.
Murkowski's newly elected Democratic colleague from Alaska, Senator Mark
Begich, signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill. The senators, like most
elected officials in the oil-dependent state, support opening the refuge's
entire 1.5-million-acre coastal plain to oil development.
Environmentalists criticized the idea.
"This bill is nothing more than an attempt to distract us from the real
issue: the out of control leasing and development that's been going on for
the past eight years in America's Arctic," Kristen Miller, Government
Affairs Director at Alaska Wilderness League, said in a release.
"The region is already under immense stress from the impacts of climate
change and there are now close to 100 million acres open for oil and gas
development," Miller said.
The fight over oil development in the Arctic refuge has raged for decades.
The entire refuge sprawls over 19 million acres and the debate has been over
whether Congress should allow drilling in the coastal plain.
The area, a narrow strip wedged between the peaks of the Brooks Range and
the Arctic Ocean, holds potential for rich deposits of oil and natural gas.
But it is also a vital site for polar bears and the migratory Porcupine
caribou herd which raises young there.
The Geological Survey estimates the coastal plain holds 10.3 billion barrels
of recoverable oil, with about a quarter of that amount attributable to
bordering Native-owned lands and state-owned waters.
Murkowski said her extended-reach drilling proposal would allow for access
to 10 percent of the coastal plain's oil and 80 percent of the area's
natural gas, as long as wells could extend eight miles.
But Eleanor Huffines, Alaska director for The Wilderness Society, said hopes
for long-reach extended drilling were unrealistic.
"It rarely happens to the extent that they propose," she said.
Although BP unit BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc is planning to drill a new
offshore prospect, Liberty, with wells that will reach a record eight miles
from where they start, most North Slope wells cannot extend nearly as far,
Huffines said.
Under the bill, exploration drilling and seismic testing would be allowed
within the refuge, but only during the winter and only from ice roads or
pads, said Robert Dillon, a Murkowski energy aide. Wells would have to be
capped at winter's end, and no permanent surface occupancy would be allowed,
he said.
"So the caribou wouldn't see it in the summer. Nobody would know that it was
there," he said.
(Editing by Christian Wiessner)
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