Firms take steps to drill in Alaskan wilderness
Two Alaska Native corporations and a small oil services firm together have applied to do extensive seismic work next winter in the Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge, the first move toward development there since Congress voted late last year to open up the pristine wilderness to oil and gas drilling.
But while President Donald Trump, congressional Republicans, the oil industry and Alaskan leaders have been pushing hard to develop the refuge that had been off limits to petroleum exploration for more than three decades, the Interior Department’s initial response to the consortium’s permit application was scathing.
“This plan is not adequate,” Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service said in a reply to the seismic application, adding that it showed “a lack of applicable details for proper agency review.” Copies of both the permit application and the Fish and Wildlife Service reply were obtained by the Washington Post.
The Alaska office of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management said in an email Wednesday that it was still reviewing the application. But the exchange over the permit highlights the difficulties of bringing to fruition a signature energy project of Trump and his fellow Republicans.
The oil services firm and project operator SAExploration said that “this partnership is dedicated to minimizing the effect of our operations on the environment.” It said it would deploy sleds, smaller vehicles and biodegradable lubricants and would construct ice roads.
But the proposal for seismic work included two 150-strong teams of workers, airstrips, giant sleds and explosives to search for and map underground oil or natural gas reserves.
The Fish and Wildlife Service complained that the permit application — the only one filed so far — failed to provide studies about the effects of the seismic work and equipment on wildlife, the tundra and the aquatic conditions in the refuge.
After reviewing the permit application, Peter Nelson, director of federal lands at the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, said: “One thing is pretty notable: how many inaccuracies and missing pieces of information there are. It really provides more evidence that industry and the Trump administration are being pretty reckless with this process.”
Oil exploration in the Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge has been the focus of debate for four decades. No drilling has been done there since it became a refuge in 1980 and no seismic work since the mid-1980s.
Interior officials have stated their determination to get drilling going in the next year or so. The U.S. Geological Survey, using new interpretation techniques and 1980s seismic data, estimated in 2016 that a portion of the refuge known as the 1002 Area might hold 7.7 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil reserves.