Federal agencies at odds over drilling plan for Alaska reserve

What's the best way to drill for oil in a mostly untouched Alaskan tundra, home to migrating caribou, abundant waterfowl, and Native Alaskan hunting and fishing grounds? It depends on which federal agency you ask. The Bureau of Land Management, the Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. EPA and the Fish and Wildlife Service are split on how to approve ConocoPhillips Co.'s bid to become the first oil producer in the 22.5-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A) in northwest Alaska. How they resolve those differences could point to how -- and to what extent -- the nation taps into a reserve believed to hold upward of a billion barrels of crude. "The federal government is at odds with itself on this decision," said Lindsey Hajduk, Alaska program director for the Conservation Lands Foundation in Anchorage. "The public deserves a thorough, scientific analysis of the project with an outcome that best protects the Arctic's fragile wetlands, wildlife and subsistence resources." The issue came to a head Friday when the Army Corps issued a Clean Water Act permit to ConocoPhillips that allows an 8-mile gravel road and drill pad and the filling of 73 acres of waters and wetlands. In the corps' view, that road configuration, known as alternative A, was the "least environmentally damaging, practicable alternative," a key litmus test under CWA (Greenwire, Jan. 20). "This alternative meets the overall project purpose, is practicable in consideration of costs, logistics and existing technology, and would result in the smallest footprint impacts to aquatic resources," the corps said in its decision, noting that the shorter route would also affect drier wetlands. But BLM came to a different conclusion in its final environmental impact statement on the project in October and picked alternative B, calling for a slightly longer road that swings south of Fish Creek, an important hunting ground for Native Alaskans in the nearby village of Nuiqsut...more