After a couple weeks of talk with conditional approval from some governmental agencies, the actual permit for the long awaited bridge has actually been issued.
Related article:
Army Corps OKs access to reserve for Conoco Phillips
http://www.adn.com/2011/12/19/2225113/army-corps-oks-access-to-petroleum.html#storylink=cpy
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Sen Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the permit clears the way for the NPR-A’s first oil production. “NPR-A has long been cited as an example of the federal government’s commitment to domestic oil production, but in reality, the gates to NPR-A have been locked by bureaucracy and regulatory red tape,” she said. “The corps’ revised decision finally unlocks those gates.”
The petroleum reserve on the North Slope was originally created by President Warren Harding in 1923 and covers 23 million acres — an area slightly smaller than the state of Indiana. As of July, the reserve had 310 authorized oil and gas leases totaling more than 3 million acres. A federal lease sale Dec. 7 took high bids of $3 million for 141,739 more acres.
Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell hailed the permit announcement as a means to increase state petroleum production. “The potential new production from the NPR-A can lead to more jobs for Alaskans,” he said in prepared remarks
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Oil pumped from within the reserve would cross the Colville River to infrastructure already in place at Conoco Phillips’ Alpine fields and eventually to the trans-Alaska pipeline. The CD-5 field is on the eastern edge of the petroleum reserve and an extension of Conoco Phillips’ Alpine Field.
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