The US Department of the Interior announced this week that the entire US Arctic Ocean is off limits for oil and gas leasing.
Using his authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, President Biden is withdrawing approximately 2.8m acres of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean nearshore in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) from future oil and gas leasing. This withdrawal ensures the waters will be protected in perpetuity from extractive development.
It also completes protections for the entire Beaufort Sea Planning Area, building upon President Obama’s 2016 withdrawal of the Chukchi Sea Planning Area and the majority of the Beaufort Sea. The withdrawal provides additional protections for Teshekpuk Lake, guarding against the potential that future Beaufort Sea oil and gas developments would seek to build onshore pipeline infrastructure into the NPR-A. A federal oil and gas lease sale has not been held in the Arctic Ocean since 2007.
The Interior Department is also initiating a rulemaking to establish maximum protection for ecologically sensitive, designated Special Areas in the NPR-A. The proposed rule, which will be available for public comment in the coming months, will consider additional protections for the more than 13m acres within the reserve designated as Special Areas in recognition of their significant natural and historical values. The administration intends to propose to limit future oil and gas leasing and industrial development in the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay Special Areas.
The Interior Department has also issued a record of decision regarding the proposed Willow Master Development Plan in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A). The Department is substantially reducing the size of the project by denying two of the five drill sites proposed by ConocoPhillips, which is seeking to develop oil and gas leases it acquired beginning in the late 1990s. The company will also relinquish rights to approximately 68,000 acres of its existing leases in the NPR-A, including approximately 60,000 acres in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area.
The decision denies two of the five drill site pads proposed by ConocoPhillips, reducing the project’s drill pads by 40%. The concurrent relinquishment of 68,000 acres by the company of its existing northernmost and southernmost leases within the Bear Tooth Unit reduces the Bear Tooth Unit’s footprint in the NPR-A by one-third. This reduces the project’s freshwater use and eliminates all infrastructure related to the two rejected drill sites, including approximately 11 miles of roads, 20 miles of pipelines and 133 acres of gravel, all of which reduces potential impacts to caribou migration and subsistence users.
The actions significantly scale back the Willow project within the constraints of valid existing rights under decades-old leases issued by prior administrations.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was required to undertake a review of the proposed Willow project in order to address flaws identified by the US District Court for the District of Alaska in its August 2021 cancellation of the previous administration’s approval of a project with five drill pads. In February, the BLM published a final supplemental environmental impact statement identifying a preferred alternative that removed one of the five proposed drill pads from consideration and deferred consideration of another.
