Ken Salazar said he regretted not being able to spend more time in Alaska as he concluded his fourth visit there as US Interior Secretary on Aug. 13. State officials nevertheless gave him an earful about crude oil pipelines while he was there.
Gov. Sean Parnell (R) asked Salazar on Aug. 12 to use his authority to expedite the US Army Corps of Engineers record of decision on the Point Thomson project, the largest undeveloped oil and gas field in Alaska.
Among other benefits, Parnell said in a letter to the secretary, Point Thomson initially would produce 10,000 b/d of condensate for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, “an important contribution to our state’s goal of increasing TAPS throughput.”
The US Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) recently informed state officials that it would delay the Point Thomson environmental impact statement decision, which it previously said it would issue on Sept. 21, until as late as December, Parnell continued.
This wasn’t ACE’s first Point Thomson EIS delay, he noted. The project’s startup already has been postponed by a year to 2015-16, which Parnell said “made it all the more urgent for federal agencies to meet this year’s deadlines and enable construction to begin this winter.”
Salazar told reporters on Aug. 13 that he had received Parnell’s letter and was aware of the Point Thomson situation. He also took pains to say that the new proposed management plan for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska does not preclude building a pipeline across it from possible future offshore oil production. But he carefully did not specify where.
Closes some routes
US Sen. Mark Begich (D) said following Salazar’s NPR-A announcement that Interior’s choice of a modified Alternative B for managing the petroleum reserve still seems to close off several possible pipeline routes across it.
“If DOI is leaving Kasegaluk Lagoon near Wainwright a special protected area, where many people assume a pipeline will come ashore, what additional conditions are going to have to be met and how feasible is it to get a pipeline in there?” he asked. “The same is true if the pipeline has to cross over a new protected area to the west of Alpine.”
Alaskans have known for decades that building a pipeline across NPR-A is a critical part of successful Arctic energy development, Begich continued. “However, today’s decision creates many more questions than answers about how we are going to get billions of barrels of oil from the Chukchi Sea into TAPS,” he said.
Salazar said that the Obama administration knows there have been delays, but added that getting the right answers will take time.
