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Published on Thursday, August 17, 2006 by the Associated Press
New Alaska Oil Leases Being Offered
by H. Josef Hebert
The Interior Department is set to open a vast area of environmentally sensitive wetlands in Alaska to new oil drilling, even as opponents point to corroding pipelines to the east at Prudhoe Bay as a reason to keep the area off-limits.
The tens of thousands of acres in and around Lake Teshekpuk on Alaska's North Slope are part of the oil-rich Barrow Arch that also includes the Prudhoe Bay fields that have kept oil flowing for decades.
The lease sale, opposed by environmentalists and some members of Congress, comes as federal regulators and a House committee investigate inspection and maintenance programs of BP-Alaska where widespread pipeline corrosion forced the partial shutdown of Prudhoe Bay oil production Aug. 6.
BP-Alaska is a subsidiary of London-based BP PLC.
Government geologists believe at least 2 billion barrels of oil and huge amounts of natural gas lie beneath the coastal lagoons, river deltas and sedge grass meadows — an area also where caribou give birth to their calves and thousands of geese migrate each summer to molt.
Within days, the Interior Department will open tracts in the lake area for leasing, with the winning bids to be announced in late September.
The lake and its surrounding wetlands are within the federal National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), a vast area of 22 million acres set aside in 1923 by the federal government for its oil and gas resources.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0817-07.htm
New Alaska Oil Leases Being Offered
by H. Josef Hebert
The Interior Department is set to open a vast area of environmentally sensitive wetlands in Alaska to new oil drilling, even as opponents point to corroding pipelines to the east at Prudhoe Bay as a reason to keep the area off-limits.
The tens of thousands of acres in and around Lake Teshekpuk on Alaska's North Slope are part of the oil-rich Barrow Arch that also includes the Prudhoe Bay fields that have kept oil flowing for decades.
The lease sale, opposed by environmentalists and some members of Congress, comes as federal regulators and a House committee investigate inspection and maintenance programs of BP-Alaska where widespread pipeline corrosion forced the partial shutdown of Prudhoe Bay oil production Aug. 6.
BP-Alaska is a subsidiary of London-based BP PLC.
Government geologists believe at least 2 billion barrels of oil and huge amounts of natural gas lie beneath the coastal lagoons, river deltas and sedge grass meadows — an area also where caribou give birth to their calves and thousands of geese migrate each summer to molt.
Within days, the Interior Department will open tracts in the lake area for leasing, with the winning bids to be announced in late September.
The lake and its surrounding wetlands are within the federal National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), a vast area of 22 million acres set aside in 1923 by the federal government for its oil and gas resources.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0817-07.htm