Posted on 09/08/2006 5:53:53 AM PDT by Brilliant
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne expressed confidence in an upcoming oil lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska when he visited the North Slope last week. "We're set to go forward," Kempthorne said after taking a helicopter ride over a section of the vast reserve. But that sale will likely have to wait.
A judge on Thursday temporarily halted lease sales of more than 1 million acres in the NPR-A that environmentalists say are essential feeding and breeding grounds for caribou and migratory birds.
Nearly 13 million acres of the reserve in northern Alaska are available for lease sale or have been sold to oil companies, most notably ConocoPhillips. The company hopes to augment waning crude stocks in the Prudhoe Bay fields east of the NPR-A.
Environmentalists filed the lawsuit against the Department of the Interior, the state of Alaska and oil companies in hopes of cordoning off about 600,000 acres of the 23-million acre reserve from more exploratory drilling. The government had planned to open bids on Sept. 27 for about 1.7 million acres, which encompass the area targeted by environmentalists.
ConocoPhillips has its eye on the contested area, which holds a potential 2 billion barrels of oil beneath the permafrost near Lake Teshekpuk.
The order, filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, said the government had not adequately considered the cumulative environmental effects of the lease sales in the eastern and western sections of the reserve.
Environmental impact statements addressed the effects of leasing individual parcels, but those reports were too narrow in scope because they did not consider how leasing in the northeastern part of the reserve would affect land and wildlife in the northwestern section, according to the order.
U.S. District Judge James Singleton chastised the defendants for the oversight, writing that they "violated the National Environmental Protection Act."
The Department of the Interior and ConocoPhillips did not immediately return messages left late Thursday.
Singleton is expected to make a final ruling the last week of September, said Charles Clusen, director of the Alaska project for the Natural Resources Defense Council based in Washington, D.C., one of the plaintiffs.
The government set aside the NPR-A in 1923 for energy development.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, whose department is in charge of the lease sale, flew over the lake area last week. He said afterward that he was convinced a restricted drilling plan could accommodate energy development and wildlife protection.
The lease plan would allow for caribou migration by banning some areas to drilling and set up buffers to protect geese molting areas, Henri Bisson, the Bureau of Land Management's Alaska director, has said.
Environmental groups said they only want to preserve the most sensitive fractions of land and don't aim to block exploration in the arctic oil reserve.
"Kempthorne can go ahead with the lease sale of the northwest and the rest of the northeast sections, but he has to leave this part alone," Clusen said. "We're not asking to shut everything down, we're just going after the most valuable wildlife area."
Other plaintiffs are the National Audobon Society, the Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society.
Primary defendants include the federal Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Clinton or Carter appointee?
Environmentalists bear a piece of responsibility for September 11 for continually blocking our energy independence.
Screw the judge--Continue with the sales!
If we can't burn fuel.....when do we start burning environmentalists?
Actually President G.H.W.Bush
Singleton, James Keith Jr.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1697489/posts?page=11#11
Lets see, we can't drill in ANWR because that land was set aside for wildlife. Now we can't drill in the National Petroleum Reserve because, ..., because, ...., how did that go again?
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