• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Governor Eyes Bristol Bay Cautiously

Posted on: Saturday, 15 October 2005, 00:00 CDT

By Wesley Loy, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska

Oct. 13--Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski has stopped short of endorsing offshore oil and gas leasing in Bristol Bay.

In a letter this week to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling in federal waters, Murkowski wrote that he hopes the public and industry will provide the agency and the state with "adequate information to decide whether" to ask President Bush to lift a drilling ban in the region.

The governor was more bullish on leasing in other Outer Continental Shelf regions around Alaska, including the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in the Arctic.

Drilling in the North Aleutian Basin, which takes in Bristol Bay, could yield trillions of cubic feet of natural gas plus millions of barrels of crude oil, government geologists believe.

But the idea of drilling in seas that support rich stocks of sockeye salmon, bottom fish, king crab and marine mammals remains highly controversial, dividing stakeholders around the bay.

The federal government collected more than $95 million in a 1988 lease sale in the bay, but spill-wary commercial fishermen, environmentalists and Alaska politicians later won cancellation and a government buyback of the leases.

Since then, salmon prices have collapsed, plunging the region's mainstay commercial fishing industry into a depression. That's heightened interest in the jobs and tax revenue that oil and gas development could bring. One major oil company, Shell, has been visiting local government chambers with a concept to produce natural gas from offshore platforms and freeze it into liquid form for shipment to the Lower 48, where natural gas prices have skyrocketed.

Murkowski submitted his letter to the MMS as part of the agency's assessment of what U.S. offshore areas to offer for lease during 2007-2012. The Bristol Bay region is among many coastal areas currently off-limits to drilling, including most of the West and East coasts.

The federal government controls waters between three and 200 miles offshore, while states control the near-shore waters.

Alaska officials are planning to lease land and near-shore waters on the remote Alaska Peninsula, which cradles Bristol Bay, on Oct. 26. Oil companies could drill horizontally from land-based sites to search for oil and gas underneath near-shore waters.

Such onshore oil development has won wide support around Bristol Bay. But people are split on offshore drilling.

The Aleutians East Borough Assembly last week passed a resolution supporting offshore leasing, so long as drillers take great care to avoid harming fish. A neighboring government, the Lake and Peninsula Borough, in 2003 also passed a resolution supporting offshore leasing.

Other supporters include two regional Native corporations, the Aleut Corp. and the Bristol Bay Native Corp., which in 2003 signed an agreement with the state to "work cooperatively to convince the federal government to reopen federal offshore oil and gas prospects in the region to exploration."

The Bristol Bay Borough, however, passed a May resolution for the offshore leasing ban to remain in place. And the Bristol Bay Native Association, a Dillingham-based social-service agency, this month also came out against offshore leasing.

Murkowski said Alaska's vast offshore areas could play a big role in bolstering U.S. energy supplies, which wobbled during Hurricane Katrina.

A big offshore gas discovery in the bay could help build up an industry and make onshore petroleum finds more commercially viable, and the gas could help reduce the region's high energy costs, Murkowski wrote.

But he stopped short of saying he supported lifting the offshore leasing ban.

-----

To see more of the Anchorage Daily News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.adn.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

RD, SC, SHEL,

Source: Anchorage Daily News

More News in this Category