Alaska petrol leases condemned
2008-01-03 10:39
Alaska - The US government gave final approval on Wednesday to oil and natural gas development off Alaska's northwest shore, drawing condemnation from environmental groups concerned with the effects on polar bears and other marine mammals.
The federal Mineral Management Service said it would hold a lease sale February 6 in Anchorage for bidding on nearly 119 140 square kilometres of outer continental shelf lands in the Chukchi Sea, the part of the Arctic Ocean that begins north of the Bering Strait and stretches between northwest Alaska and the northern coast of the Russian Far East.
It would be the first federal oil and gas lease sale in the Chukchi Sea since 1991. Mineral Management Service Alaska spokesperson Robin Cacy said the area contains about 15 billion barrels of conventionally recoverable oil and 2.18 trillion cubic metres of conventionally recoverable natural gas.
The Chukchi Sea is home to one of two US polar bear populations. The US Fish and Wildlife Service is days away from deciding whether polar bears should be declared threatened because of global warming and its effect on the animal's primary habitat, sea ice.
"The polar bear's existence is increasingly threatened by the impact of climate change-induced loss of sea ice," said Margaret Williams, managing director of World Wildlife Fund's Kamchatka and Bering Sea Programme. "The chances for the continued survival of this icon of the Arctic will be greatly diminished if its last remaining critical habitat is turned into a vast oil and gas field."
Polar bears spend most of their lives on sea ice. They use sea ice for to hunt their primary prey, ringed seals. In Alaska, females use sea ice to den or to reach denning areas on land.
'Intensive care'
Arctic sea ice this summer plummeted to the lowest levels since satellite measurements began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre at the University of Colorado.
Brendan Cummings of the Centre for Biological Diversity, one of the organisations that filed the petition seeking polar bear protections, said protections for marine mammals are insufficient.
"The polar bear is in need of intensive care, but with this lease sale the Bush Administration is proposing to burn down the hospital," Cummings said.
Drilling could take place no closer than 80ke off shore.
The sale area will not include near shore waters ranging from about 40-8km from the coast, Mineral Management Service director Randall Luthi said. That buffer includes a near shore "polynya" through which bowhead and beluga whales, other marine mammals, and marine birds migrate north in the spring, and in which local communities subsistence hunt.
Two sales have been held in the Chukchi Sea Planning Area previously in 1988 and 1991. All of those leases have expired.
- AP