A sale of oil and gas leases for exploration on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been set for Jan. 6.
The Alaska state office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) posted an announcement Dec. 3 saying the notice would be published in the Dec. 7 Federal Register. That will allow a lease sale to be held 30 days later.
The sale will need to offer at least 400,000 acres in accordance with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which mandated that the sale be held by at least Dec. 22, 2021. Given Joe Biden’s opposition to ANWR leasing, the Trump administration has set the stage for a sale 14 days before Biden’s inauguration as president.
Procedural steps to finalize the lease sales may be completed within those 14 days, but that is not certain.
Seismic survey also considered
The BLM Alaska office published a notice Nov. 17 calling for nominations of lease tracts to be considered for a sale (OGJ Online, Nov. 16, 2020). The 30-day deadline for the nominations will not arrive until Dec. 17.
BLM apparently concluded that there is no requirement for the agency to await completion of lease nominations before announcing the lease sale date—a maneuver that likely caught many people by surprise.
The BLM Alaska office also is preparing an environmental assessment on a request for authorization to conduct a seismic survey in ANWR. The request, from the Kaktovik Inupiat Corp., received a public comment period, and when BLM releases an environmental assessment, that, too, will be given a public comment period.
Kaktovik Inupiat had been hoping to mobilize men and equipment starting near the end of December. It intended to use as its seismic contractor SAExploration Holdings Inc., a company that filed in bankruptcy court Aug. 28 for a financial restructuring.
Thinking long term
Lem Smith, vice-president of upstream policy for the American Petroleum Institute, issued a statement welcoming the lease sale announcement.
“The world will continue to demand more energy, and oil and natural gas will continue to be a significant source of that energy for decades to come,” Smith said, adding that “it’s essential that the nation takes a strategic, long-term approach to US energy policy.”
Lawsuits by environmental groups and delays in permitting by a Biden administration could slow down the process of preparing for oil exploration in ANWR. It remains to be seen whether any legal or administrative maneuvers can block drilling entirely, absent an act of Congress.
Even without litigation and regulatory gauntlets, development does not occur quickly on the North Slope. “Once any sale is finalized, it could be nearly a decade before production from the coastal plain could start because of the time needed to acquire leases, explore and develop the required infrastructure,” Smith said.
Much work on the North Slope is conducted in winter, when ice roads and frozen tundra minimize the surface impacts of heavy equipment. The winter seasons for such work can be about 4 months, sometimes less, a constraint that adds to the time it takes to get projects done.
Oil development in ANWR is limited by the 2017 law to no more than 2,000 acres of surface disturbance for production and support facilities. ANWR overall has about 19 million acres.
