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The Biden administration issued a long-awaited study Wednesday that recommends allowing a major oil development on Alaska’s North Slope, and the move — while not final — drew immediate anger from environmentalists who saw it as a betrayal of the president’s pledges to reduce carbon emissions and promote clean energy sources. ConocoPhillips Alaska had proposed five drilling sites, and the alternative proposed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management calls for up to three drill sites initially. Even as the land agency released its report, the U.S. Interior Department said in its own press release that it has “substantial concerns”...

A federal judge has reversed the Trump administration’s environmental approval for ConocoPhillips’ multibillion-dollar proposed Willow development on Alaska’s North Slope, throwing a significant roadblock in front of a project seen by analysts as a needed boost to the state’s flagging oil industry and tax revenue. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason, in a 110-page ruling on two related lawsuits Wednesday, said the Trump administration’s approval of the project under the National Environmental Policy Act was flawed because it failed to thoroughly analyze potential greenhouse gas pollution, and didn’t sufficiently consider legal protections for Teshekpuk Lake, an important subsistence area on...

The impending oil renaissance in Alaska’s North Slope is going to be even more massive than previously projected. The oil lurking under the surface of the historically oil rich region is enough to turn the state’s economy around and reinstate it as a major player in the oil industry, according to new research from IHS Markit, a London-based global information and analytics provider. The study shows that the North Slope’s crude output could increase by as much as a whopping 40 percent in the next eight years, more than regaining its place as one of the major powerhouses of the...

The Arctic Energy Center announced last week that a coalition of Alaskans are petitioning the federal government to grant leases for oil and gas exploration and production in and offshore of the North Slope, including the Inupiat tribe. “Arctic Iñupiat Offshore (AIO) announced today that it is joining the Arctic Coalition, a collection of 21 Alaskan and nationwide organizations that support responsible energy development in and off the coast of Alaska,” the announcement stated. “The group is calling on the Obama administration to listen to the views and perspectives of Alaska residents and keep Alaska’s Arctic offshore acreage in the...

BP is cutting 4,000 jobs worldwide and some of those reductions will be in Alaska. An intra-company email obtained by the Journal sent to BP Alaska employees Jan. 12 states that the company plans to reduce its total in state workforce by 13 percent. All employees should know their status by early spring and the majority of layoffs will be conducted by mid-year, according to the email. BP directly employs about 2,100 people and has another 6,000 contract workers in Alaska, based on the company's 2015 Alaska Hire report. The 13 percent reduction will come from the company's direct employees,...

Late last year a second major oil company was forced to abandon plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska - and irresponsible, high-fiving anti-development activists, most of whom live thousands of miles away and will not be affected, could not be more thrilled. But for those who live close by, the ones who will be most affected, the news is devastating. Statoil recently announced that it's giving up 16 of its company-operated leases in the Chukchi Sea and abandoning its stake in 50 Chukchi leases operated by ConocoPhillips. The Norwegian company added that it would...

Arctic offshore drilling by Royal Dutch Shell PLC drew protests on two continents this year, but a more modest proposal for extracting petroleum where polar bears roam has moved forward with much less attention. While Shell proposed exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea about 80 miles off Alaska’s northwest coast, a Texas oil company wants to build a gravel island as a platform for five or more extraction wells that could tap oil 6 miles from shore in the Beaufort Sea. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is deciding how to assess the environmental effect of a production plan...

The state of Alaska will now own more of the big Alaska LNG Project. It will have to shell out more money for it, too. Alaska's Permanent Fund may have to be put up as collateral, also. Legislators have been meeting in special session in Juneau since Oct. 24 to review Gov. Bill Walker's proposal for the state to buy out TransCanada's share of the planned $45 billion to $65 billion pipeline and liquefied gas project. On Nov. 3 and 4, the state Senate (16-3) and House (39-0) gave their approvals. The acquisition is to be effective Dec. 1, under...

Alaska was long at the vanguard of America’s energy industry. At one time the State of Alaska accounted for as much as one-quarter of the entire country’s domestic oil production. Alaska’s vast fields also served as a source of pride – and the backbone of the state’s economy. As production surged, it was common to hear industry men revel in the United States’ diminishing reliance on foreign supplies as they worked rigs up and down regional reserves. Yet, as energy development in the lower 48 has burgeoned over the past decade, those refrains have waned – as has production. Fed...

Activists trying to stop Shell’s offshore oil drilling in the U.S.’s Arctic Ocean region invoke the interests of native Alaskans. “These communities depend on this environment for food and resources and have stewarded it for centuries,” Greenpeace says, as part of its “The People vs. Shell” campaign—what the group describes as possibly “the most important fight in environmental history.” A lot of native Alaskans, including many who live along the state’s North Slope, would prefer that Greenpeace mind its own business.

Another test of methane hydrates on the North Slope, a potential huge new gas resource, is being planned. State officials are in discussions with the U.S. Department of Energy and the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp., or JOGMC on possible joint-sponsorship, and talks are planned with North Slope producers about potential sites for a test within one of the operating units on the Slope, Commissioner of Natural Resources Mark Myers said. A technical evaluation of different sites is now underway, Myers said. Drilling within an existing industry unit is preferable for cost reasons but sites on nearby unleased...

The Obama administration delivered a major blow to Shell’s Arctic drilling plans on Tuesday, by ruling that wildlife protections bar the company from simultaneously boring two wells into the Chukchi Sea this summer. The decision will force Shell to scale back its hopes of completing two exploratory oil wells in waters north of Alaska this summer and is another setback for the firm that has spent seven years and $7 billion trying to find crude in the Arctic Ocean. At issue is the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to allow sound from Shell’s planned drilling to disturb walruses, polar bears...

Alaska's crude oil production has declined from 1.8 million barrels per day (MMb/d) in 1991 to 0.5 MMb/d in 2014, and it is expected to continue declining through 2040. Almost 75% of Alaska's crude oil production from 1990 to 2012 was from the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk River fields in the central North Slope, which respectively produced 4.9 billion and 1.7 billion barrels of crude oil over this period. Crude oil production in Alaska is sensitive to the challenging environment—including variable ice conditions and limited time without ice coverage—as well as pipeline economics. However, recent conditional approval granted to Royal...

In what is likely the final action in a lengthy environmental lawsuit against ConocoPhillips’ CD-5 project on the North Slope, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason denied the plaintiff’s final motion for a summary judgment to invalidate the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Record of Decision and permits for the project. The suit was filed in 2013 by several residents of Nuiqsut, a nearby Inupiat village. The project itself, a satellite of the producing Alpine oil field near the Colville River, has been under construction since 2013 and is nearing completion. Although Gleason ruled in 2014 that the Corps did...

Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp. said June 1 it received authorization to export liquefied natural gas to non-free trade agreement countries at its Alaska LNG terminal. The proposed project received conditional authorization from the U.S. Department of Energy to export up to 20 million metric tons per year of LNG for 30 years. The terminal previously received authorization to export to countries with U.S. trade agreements. “As with any large scale LNG project, access to as many markets as possible will improve the commercial viability of the proposed project,” Steve Butt, Alaska LNG senior project manager, said in a statement....

The Obama administration gave conditional approval on Monday for Shell Gulf of Mexico, Inc. to start drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean this summer. The approval is a major victory for Shell and the rest of the petroleum industry, which has sought for years to drill in the remote waters of the Chukchi seas, which are believed to hold vast reserves of oil and gas. “We have taken a thoughtful approach to carefully considering potential exploration in the Chukchi Sea, recognizing the significant environmental, social and ecological resources in the region and establishing high standards for the...

The National Energy Technology Laboratory has published some new results from methane hydrate testing carried out in 2011 and 2012 in the Ignik Sikumi test well on Alaska’s North Slope. According to an article in the latest edition of NETL’s Fire in Ice publication, the results shed light on the potential use of injected carbon dioxide as a means of producing natural gas from methane hydrate deposits, while also demonstrating that producing gas by depressuring the deposits may work more easily than previously thought. Methane hydrate is a naturally occurring solid that traps concentrated volumes of methane, the primary component...

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management issued a final decision Friday that it said will open the way for the first oil and gas production from federal lands in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The decision is a shift from the alternative that BLM had earlier selected as its preferred option. But it aligns with the alternative chosen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. BLM-Alaska spokeswoman Lesli Ellis-Wouters said BLM had indicated it would take into account the Corps’ decision in making its final determination. If the two agencies were not on the same page, ConocoPhillips Alaska would not have...

On Sunday, President Obama announced that he will recommend to Congress that it should designate 12 million acres in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as wilderness.[i] When briefing the press about the plan, Presidential Advisor John Podesta said that regardless of the law and Congressional action, the administration was going to manage these 12 million acres as if it had been designated as wilderness by Congress. That means that ANWR will be unavailable to resource development. In 1980, Congress set aside some of the acreage in ANWR (the “1002 area,” comprising the Coastal Plain) for future consideration of oil...

Genesis 14:21 The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.” Just as the price of gas is reaching levels Americans can both go to the grocery store and fill their cars in the same week, our Glorious Premier Obozo decides to close the remainder of the ANWAR desert to oil exploration. This oil reserve holds more than thirty years of energy for America and would further stabilize the price of gas, but Marxists like him hate cheap oil so he is closing this production by edict. Alaskans want to develop and...