WASHINGTON _ U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is issuing a directive aimed at spurring oil and gas development in Alaska, including a move to assess just how much crude might be lurking under the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Zinke's order, to be signed during his trip to Anchorage, also compels a rewrite of an Obama-era plan that limited oil and natural gas development in roughly half of the nearly 23 million acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. The move responds to complaints from oil companies that said a plan set in 2013 is too restrictive, blocking drilling in promising areas while hampering their ability to build pipelines there.
"This is land that was set up with the sole intention of oil and gas production; however, years of politics over policy put roughly half of the NPR-A off-limits," Zinke said in a statement announcing the move. "Using this land for its original intent will create good-paying jobs and revenue."
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, along Alaska's northeast frontier, was protected as a refuge by Congress in 1980. President Donald Trump has already proposed raising $1.8 billion over the next decade by opening up parts of the 19 million-acre refuge to oil and gas development. The idea of allowing drilling in the refuge for its estimated 12 billion barrels of crude has long been championed by Alaska Republicans, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
But it's anathema to environmentalists, who have successfully blocked ANWR drilling plans from advancing on Capitol Hill for years by raising concerns about threats to the polar bears, caribou, wolves and other animals that live and travel through the territory.
The NPR-A was established roughly a century ago as a potential oil resource for the U.S, Navy. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated the reserve contains about 895 million barrels of economically recoverable oil and 52.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. But development has been slow, in part because of logistical and legal hurdles to launching activity even on leased acreage in the refuge.
Zinke's order compels Interior Department officials to deliver a plan to rework an oversight plan for the reserve that would strike an "appropriate" balance of promoting development while protecting other resources.
The directive also compels a plan for updating assessments of how much undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and gas is located on Alaska's North Slope, with a special focus on federal lands in the NPR-A and a section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
