Enthusiasm for “Drill Baby Drill” slipping in wake of Gulf spill

Alaska Governor Sean Parnell today in the Wall Street Journal:

The Gulf Spill and Alaska

We see signs that the Obama administration wants to use the disaster to shut down oil production even in the safest areas.

As I noted in these pages last year, responsible offshore oil and gas production, particularly off Alaska’s coast, has to be a critical component of our long-term energy security strategy—and so too does responsible onshore domestic production. Yet there are troubling signs that the Obama administration is attempting to stifle—particularly in my state—the critical onshore component of America’s ability to produce its own energy.

The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) holds up to 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil. While this area was set aside by Congress in 1980 for later consideration of whether to permit oil and gas production there, a federal agency is now undertaking a “review” of the management plan of the refuge—a review that seems aimed at laying the groundwork for a wilderness designation that would bar production.

But it is not only ANWR that the Obama administration seems intent on locking up. Federal agencies are also now blocking oil development in the National Petroleum Reserve—Alaska.

Although familiar with ANWR, most Americans are less likely to know about NPR-A and how vital it is to our energy security. Given recent developments, it’s time to elevate the position this area holds in our national discourse.

NPR-A, a 23 million acre stretch of Alaska’s North Slope, was set aside by President Warren Harding in 1923 for the specific purpose of supplying our country and military with oil and gas. Since 1976 it has been administered by the Department of the Interior, and since 1980 it has been theoretically open for development. The most recent estimates indicate that it holds 12 billion barrels of oil and 73 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

In addition to containing enormous hydrocarbons, NPR-A is very close to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which means that there would be relatively little additional infrastructure needed to bring this new oil to our domestic market.

But even here, progress has been stalled.

For more than five years, the state of Alaska has worked closely with major energy companies, local communities and Alaska Native corporations and tribes on a balanced development plan. To back this project, these entities have formed a rare coalition and made significant compromises, often at the behest of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to clear regulatory hurdles for development on a site in NPR-A known as CD-5.

But this February the Corps reversed course and denied the issuance of a critical permit for CD-5. Specifically, the Corps denied ConocoPhillips’s request to build a bridge over a river to accommodate a pipeline and vehicles that can access the company’s existing production facilities at the nearby Alpine field. The Corps decreed that the bridge shouldn’t be built and that the pipeline should proceed under water, a course of action that would significantly undermine the economics of the project while posing a greater risk to the environment.

Go check it out.

Brian1972 on June 2, 2010 at 3:28 PM

I’m going out on a limb here, but I blame BP for what happened.

YYZ on June 2, 2010 at 3:15 PM

I’m going to blame Obama exclusively.
After all, destroying the environment is what the evil Republican British Oil companies do for a living, so what did you really expect of them anyway?

Obama promised he would heal the planet and make the seas recede.
So recede the seas 5,000ft already, get in there and plug the damn hole with your fierce urgency of now, Captain Utopia!

Obama Lied,
The Gulf Died!

Hell No,
No more O!

Obama doesn’t care about Cajun people.

Brian1972 on June 2, 2010 at 3:37 PM