Tuesday, April 06, 2004
By Yereth Rosen, Reuters

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A plan by Alaska's governor to authorize oil drilling in state waters close to a wildlife refuge is angering local Eskimo residents who worry it may hurt the whale population they hunt.

In what he characterized as a rebuke to the nation's "extreme environmental community," Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski said last week he will authorize oil drilling in state waters within three miles of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Inupiat Eskimos of the North Slope say any oil development in new state waters in the Arctic would come at the expense of three special no-leasing zones established to protect whales, the Native whale hunt, and a variety of wildlife.

Arctic whaling villages unanimously oppose oil and gas activities there, said Maggie Ahmaogak, executive director of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, the organization that regulates the traditional whale hunt.

"We have had some grave concerns over protection of this migratory path and the feeding areas, and also oil spills," Ahmaogak said. "The bowhead whale, the great animal, is the mainstay of our life up here in the north."

Although they generally embrace onshore development, the North Slope's mostly Inupiat residents have long opposed drilling in Arctic waters.

Any spilled oil could become trapped under pack ice, impossible to clean up and unlikely to degrade in the frigid temperatures, they say. They also cite scientific studies showing that industrial noise, light, and traffic are extremely disruptive to whales and other wildlife.

Murkowski, who first announced his plans in Washington last Wednesday, has yet to specify the protected areas as those he will open to leasing. But they are the only new offshore sites in the Beaufort Sea still available to exploration because the state has already put up for sale the leases for all other areas.

Murkowski maintains that concerns about environmental threats are unjustified, since offshore drilling occurs safely in other parts of the country.

"Look, if it's all right for Texas, if it's all right for Louisiana or for other areas of the country, why is it not all right for Alaska?" he told reporters last week. "I feel quite confident that we will attract some interesting prospects here and that we can do it correctly in harmony with the concern over the migratory whales and the concerns of the Eskimo people," he said.

Beaufort Sea lease sales held by the state over recent years have drawn only modest numbers of bids, mostly clustered near existing oil fields, even though vast amounts of territory were offered for exploration, according to Alaska Division of Oil and Gas records.

Offshore areas that are distant from existing fields are very costly to explore, and any subsea pipeline to ship oil would be prohibitively expensive, experts say.

"Frankly, I think that there would be relatively little interest," said Matt Berman, an economist with the University of Alaska Anchorage's Institute for Social and Economic Research.

Exploration wells have been drilled off the Arctic Refuge's coastline in the past, in both state and federal waters, with no resulting production. In the early 1990s, for example, Arco Alaska Inc. discovered oil at a prospect 16 miles off the coast, but high costs precluded further development.

Source: Reuters