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Alaska Natives Lobby Obama Admin. Against Oil Development in NPR-A

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Native Alaskans have teamed up with environmental forces to urge the Obama administration to stick with a conservative management plan for the National Petroleum Reserve, despite oil industry protests that the proposal would block energy development in lands specifically reserved for extracting fossil fuels.

Joseph Sagviyuaq Sage, a whaling captain from Barrow, Alaska, and Lillian Stone, a teacher from Anaktuvuk Pass, are set to meet with Senate staffers and Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes while in Washington, D.C. this week. The pair are collaborating with the Alaska Wilderness League to make the case that some areas in the 23-million acre reserve should be off limits to oil development.

The push comes as the administration nears a final decision on how to balance energy production and conservation in the 89-year-old reserve in northwest Alaska. In August, the Interior Department unveiled its “preferred” management plan, which would allow oil and gas development in 11.8 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska while blocking the activity in other areas that are home to caribou herds and polar bears.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management appears likely to make a final decision on whether to adopt its preferred approach sometime after the Nov. 6 presidential election.

Stone said she wanted policymakers in the nation’s capital to know “we are real people and we are directly impacted by any activity that goes on within NPR-A.” Oil drilling in the reserve threaten the caribou that roam the land, Stone said, as well as the Alaska Natives who hunt the animal for food and clothing.

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Industry Protests Obama’s Plan for Alaskan Oil Reserves

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Photo credit: roger4336

A new proposal by the Obama administration to expand drilling to half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) has attracted criticism from the oil industry, as the plan still leaves a broad area off limits to new oil development. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said new development will be permitted in an 11.8 million-acre geographical area, which purportedly holds about 549 million barrels of oil, while coastal regions such as Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay — where there is a higher concentration of seals and polar bears — will receive “special protection.”

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the entire reserve harbors about 900 million barrels of oil, a region west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge approximately the size of Indiana. Opening up only half of this area to leasing is disappointing, says Erik Milito, a director at the American Petroleum Institute (API). “This falls short of where we need to be.”

In a conference call on Tuesday, API president and CEO Jack Gerard disputed President Obama’s so-called “all of the above” energy policy. “Today, we’re sending a letter to the White House to urge the president and his agencies to do more than merely talk about ‘all-of-the-above’ while they pursue policies that include ‘none-of- the-below,’” Gerard charged.

Gerard protested that the Obama administration’s plan to restrict this vast opportunity for oil development is unacceptable, and that it will further depress the nation’s capabilities to become more energy independent. “One half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, it was announced just yesterday [August 13], has been taken off limits,” Gerard affirmed. “This is an area by law dating back to the 1920s, [which] was specifically set aside in Alaska for oil and natural gas development. The announcement yesterday by Secretary [Ken] Salazar was essentially an announcement that we’re going to take everything that was legislatively set aside and we’re placing them off-limits.”

President Warren Harding established the NPR-A in 1923 as a resource for the U.S. Navy during a period when its ships were transferring over from coal to oil power. In 1976, the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act handed 23.5 million acres over to the Department of the Interior. Then in 1980, the Interior Department Appropriations Act appointed the agency’s Bureau of Land Management to administer oil leasing on the Alaskan land.

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