Free Republic

The Bureau of Land Management is auctioning off 10 million acres worth of leases Wednesday for oil and gas exploration in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), 150 miles west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).Republicans in Congress are fighting to open ANWR to oil and gas exploration through the GOP tax bill. The Trump administration is moving ahead with oil drilling in Alaska through the NPR-A, 23 million acres free from the federal restrictions that cover ANWR.The 10-million-acre lease offering will be the largest single lease sale in the history of the area. The previous record was set...

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...

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...

ConocoPhillips’ plans for the first oil production facilities from federal lands in Alaska moved one step closer to reality Wednesday, as the Interior Department released a key environmental study on the project. Although it is not a final verdict, the assessment by Interior’s Bureau of Land Management sets the stage for approval later this year by outlining steps ConocoPhillips would have to take to mitigate environmental effects while boring up to 33 wells at its Greater Mooses Tooth site. “Reaching this stage of permitting is a major milestone for the project and for the future of balanced, responsible federal oil...

House Republicans on Wednesday took one of the first steps toward overturning a new Obama administration plan for managing wildlife and oil development in the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. During a House subcommittee hearing on a bill to repeal the reserve management plan, Republicans insisted the administration’s blueprint tilts too heavily toward conservation by walling off energy development in roughly half of the reserve. “The Obama administration appears determined, against the wishes of most Alaskans, to keep their energy resources off limits,” said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. who sponsored the repeal bill along with Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska. Finalized by...

State, ConocoPhillips, ASRC join defense of permit for first NPR-A development - - - - Quite a legal battle is shaping up over the expansion of oil and gas development into Alaska’s western North Slope frontier. The conflict centers on a planned project known as Colville Delta 5. ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. has a federal permit to build and operate the CD-5 drill site inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Seven residents of Nuiqsut, a predominantly Inupiat Eskimo village a few miles southeast of CD-5, are suing in Anchorage federal court to invalidate the permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of...

Energy Policy: As the administration fast-tracks solar projects on public lands, it has locked up more than half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, preferring to continue outsourcing energy jobs and dollars. The price of gasoline, which was $1.84 a gallon the day President Obama took office, has more than doubled since, willfully aided and abetted by an administration that claims we can't drill our way to energy independence as we ignore vast reserves of North American energy that dwarf OPEC's and we sit on 100 years' supply of petroleum. Few Americans have heard of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska...

It’s across the Colville and into the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska for ConocoPhillips Alaska — at last. A bridge crossing of the Nigliq Channel of the Colville River was the preferred alternative in the 2004 final environmental impact statement for Alpine satellite development, but it took years for the company to get alignment from the North Slope Borough, the adjacent community of Nuiqsut and major federal agencies. It came together Dec. 19 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit for CD-5, the Alpine satellite which will be the first development built in NPR-A. “ConocoPhillips is pleased that the...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has approved a bridge-and-road project that will give ConocoPhillips access to the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska’s North Slope, the federal agency announced today. The Clean Water Act permit gives ConocoPhillips the go-ahead for its CD-5 Alpine Satellite Development Project. The oil company has long sought to drill and develop the area and needed the permits to build infrastructure connecting CD-5 to existing pipelines. The thumbs-up concludes a yearlong federal review and follows approvals earlier this month by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Fish and Wildlife Service. The permit allows Houston-based ConocoPhillips...

Two federal agencies have reached an agreement with ConocoPhillips Alaska that moves the company closer to building the first bridge and pipeline over the Colville River on Alaska's North Slope. The company wants access across the Arctic river to reach leases within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Oil pumped from the leases would be the first production within the vast reserve. The Army Corps of Engineers in February 2010 denied a permit for the bridge and said a buried pipe would be less environmentally damaging. ConocoPhillips appealed, and the Corps sought a review of the project by the Environmental Protection Agency...

A roadblock to development of ConocoPhillips’ CD-5 drill site in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska has been removed. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, which had opposed the company’s plan to put the crude oil pipeline from CD-5 to the company’s Alpine production facilities on a bridge to be built across the Nigliq Channel of the Colville River, have reached “an agreement in principle” with the company on the proposal. In a Dec. 5 announcement the U.S. Department of the Interior said the agreement fulfills a request from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the...

Anchorage—The Bureau of Land Management announced today that the Detailed Statement of Sale for the Dec. 7 National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) oil and gas lease sale is available at http://www.blm.gov/ak. The BLM will open sealed bids for the lease sale on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011, at 1 p.m. at the Anchorage Federal Building, Denali Room, 222 W 7th Ave., Anchorage, AK. Sealed bids must be received by 4:00 p.m., Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 at the BLM-Alaska State Office. The BLM will offer 283 tracts comprising approximately 3,060,176 acres in this sale. Additional details on the sale are available in today’s...

Energy Policy: The same administration that says we can and should get oil from the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is blocking a bridge needed to get it to market on environmental grounds. In his May 14 weekly radio address, President Obama called for annual lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), not necessarily out of any conviction that increased domestic energy supply is good for prices and national security, but basically to perpetuate the myth that the oil companies refuse to drill in leased or leasable areas. While he restricts oil production in the Gulf of Mexico and...

Gov. Rick Perry is set to unveil an energy plan for the country today that he says will unleash 1.2 million jobs while unlocking America’s oil, gas and coal resources. “We’re sitting on a treasure trove of energy in this country,” Perry said on CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report” Thursday night. “There’s 300 years worth of reserves underneath the land of America, and that’s how we’re going to get America working again.” Perry is set to reveal more details during an 11:30 a.m. Central event at a steel plant in West Mifflin, Pa. But the Republican presidential hopeful has already made...

Republicans aiming to accelerate domestic oil and gas drilling today advanced legislation that would force the government to sell leases in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve and speed up permitting of roads, pipelines and other essential infrastructure in that remote area. The measure was approved 28-14 by the House Natural Resources Committee, which sets the legislation up for full House consideration later this month. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., the panel chairman and bill sponsor, said the bill was necessary to prevent the Obama administration from keeping some of Alaska’s “tremendous energy resources . . . under lock and key.” He said...

The Obama administration today said a proposal from House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) to expedite oil and gas leasing and energy infrastructure permitting in an Alaska reserve could force federal regulators to flout environmental laws and includes a costly, redundant resource assessment. Mike Pool, deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management, also announced the agency will hold lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve, known as NPR-A, in December 2011 and each year after, making good on the administration's mid-May promise to expedite development in the 23-million-acre reserve.

The government will sell oil and gas drilling leases in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve by the end of this year, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced today. The move builds on President Barack Obama’s May 14 announcement that the Interior Department would begin conducting annual lease sales for tracts inside the 23-million-acre reserve on Alaska’s North Slope. Salazar’s announcement came at the end of a nearly two-hour House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing on Republican legislation that would mandate annual lease sales in the reserve and speed up federal permitting of roads, pipelines and other infrastructure needed to support oil and gas...

Without corps permit, ConocoPhillips can’t start work in 2010-11 winter season - - - Work on ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Alpine West or CD-5 satellite — the first satellite planned for development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska — has been delayed by at least a year. The company had planned to begin construction in the winter of 2010-11, with two winter construction seasons required. While the company received permits it needs from the North Slope Borough and the State of Alaska, it has not received its 404 permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Helene Harding, vice president of North Slope...

Just three months after successfully bidding on 72 lease tracts in the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s September 2008 National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska lease sale, Dallas-based Petro-Hunt LLC has elected to relinquish all of its bids and forfeit its deposit of $2.75 million. Petro-Hunt had been the top bidder in the sale with total bonus bids amounting to $13.7 million. In a Jan. 7 notice announcing receipt of final payments on high bids from the lease sale, BLM said that Petro-Hunt had notified the agency in late December that “falling oil prices made it uneconomical for it to pursue oil production...

Anadarko Petroleum Corp., ConocoPhillips, Petro-Canada, FEX LP and Petro-Hunt LLC have won 10-year leases to drill in in northern areas of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. The companies submitted high bids of almost $31 million for 150 tracts in the Northwest and Northeast portions of the reserve. The Bureau of Land Management accepted all high bids in the Sept. 24 oil and gas lease sale and has mailed lease offers to the high bidders. If the companies accept the lease offers and pay the balance of the bonus bid, the annual rental and lease processing fee, the federal agency...