Bush Targets "Heart of Western Arctic" for Oil Drilling

by J.R. Pegg

(ENS) WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's proposed revisions to the 1998 management plan for the northeast portion of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve are unjustified and threaten "the biological heart of the Western Arctic," according to former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

The proposal aims to open protected areas of the region to oil and gas leasing, leaving only four percent of the 4.6 million acre planning area protected from drilling.

"There is no case at all to be made for doing this at this time," Babbitt told reporters Tuesday.

Babbitt, who served as Interior Secretary during the Clinton administration, spearheaded the formation of the 1998 plan the Bush administration is seeking to change.

The Babbitt plan opened 87 percent of the northeast planning area of the reserve, known as the NPR-A, to oil and gas drilling. It barred permanent roadbuilding in much of the area and blocked oil and gas development in some 840,000 acres, including Teshekpuk Lake and surrounding wetlands.

Dr. John Schoen, a senior scientist with Audubon Alaska, calls the lake and its surrounding ecosystem "ecologically unique and one of the most critical wetlands areas in the Arctic."

The revisions to the plan would relax the roadbuilding ban, cut protection of the Teshekpuk Lake ecosystem by nearly two thirds and open 96 percent -- all but 213,000 acres -- of the northeast planning area to oil and gas drilling.

BLM officials say these areas are of high oil and gas potential, and insist improved drilling techniques can minimize the environmental impacts.

The goal of the amended plan is "to strike a balance between protecting resources and allowing reasonable development," BLM Alaska State Director Henri Bisson said earlier this month when he announced the proposal.

Bisson said the revised plan could increase potential oil production within the area from 60,000 barrels a day to 200,000 barrels a day.

The proposal is justified by the nation's growing thirst for oil and gas, he said. "Energy is an important component of our daily lives," Bisson said. "There are 190 million vehicles and 56 million homes that depend on oil and gas each and every day."

Babbitt says the estimates of the additional oil potential are speculative, and he contends the oil industry has by no means tapped out the lands made available by the 1998 plan.

"If there is a slice of pie on your plate, why not eat it before you ask for more?" Babbitt asked. "They have plenty to do right now."

The former interior secretary called the science in the BLM's Environmental Impact Statement "pathetic" and said the only new science on the impacts of Arctic oil drilling would suggest more, not less protection for this small corner of the reserve.

He cited a report issued last year by the National Academy of Sciences which found that the impacts of more than 30 years of drilling on Alaska's North Slope were evident over an area far exceeding the specific areas drilled.

Conservationists worry about the impacts on wildlife of the wider drilling plan.

Schoen says there is broad scientific consensus that oil and gas drilling has negative impacts on the animals that depend on the scarce wetlands of the Arctic.

"The science is quite clear that this is a very unusual, highly sensitive ecological area," he said, "and there is not any scientific evidence to justify the risk of development."

Molting geese and migrating caribou would be at greatest risk from the revisions to the 1998 plan, according to the Audubon scientist.

"The likely impacts on wildlife would not just be felt in Alaska, but also in the Lower 48 states, Mexico and Canada," said Schoen. He stressed that the area's caribou herd is of upmost importance to Native Alaskans.

BLM officials insist the residents of the area, many of whom have benefited from oil and gas development, were involved in the process and will continue to be afforded input into the new drilling proposal.

But Babbitt, who has just returned from a visit to the area, says Native Alaskans are wary of the expansion.

The revisions to the plan represent "a grave injustice to the native groups and their way of life," Babbitt told reporters.

The BLM will take comments on the proposal through August 2, 2004.

The dispute is not the only one surrounding efforts by the Bush administration to expand oil and gas development within the 23.5 million acre NPR-A.

The reserve was created in 1923 by President Warren Harding. It is the single largest block of public land in the United States and the vast majority of it is still wild.

Few argue that a primary role for the area is energy development, but when Congress gave the BLM management responsibility for the reserve in 1976, it noted that the area is also vital to wildlife as well as to several thousand Native Alaskans who live in the area and depend on the land for subsistence.

Environmentalists believe the Bush administration has tilted the scales too far in favor of oil and gas development.

A coalition of groups has filed suit in federal court to block the BLM's January 2004 decision to open virtually all 8.8 million acres of the northwest portion of the NPR-A to oil and gas leasing.

The groups believe the plan fails to fully protect several coastal and inland ecosystems important to wildlife, including several endangered species.

On June 2, a BLM lease sale of 123 tracts in the northwest portion of the NPR-A drew bids of some $53.9 million.

The court has ordered the BLM to prohibit any surface occupancy, including seismic activities, on any leases issued until the litigation is resolved and the court rules on the merits of the case.