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The
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced that its annual oil
and gas lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska
will be held on Dec. 11. The sale will be the 15th in a series
of oil lease sales held by the BLM for that region on the
western side of Alaska’s North Slope.
The BLM is also finishing up a draft plan to overturn Obama-era
protections that put about half of the 23 million-acre (9.3
million-hectare) reserve off limits to oil development, citing
needs to protect caribou, migratory birds and other resources
important to the region's indigenous people and to the nation.
The Trump administration and the oil industry argue the Obama
plan is too restrictive and needs to be replaced.
"With advancements in drilling technology, it was prudent to
develop a new plan that provides for greater economic
development of our resources while still providing protections
for important resources, such as subsistence uses,” Chad
Padgett, BLM's Alaska state director, said in a statement.
The reserve, which lies well to the west of the legacy Prudhoe
Bay and Kuparuk oil fields, was undeveloped for decades.
Several recent discoveries have sparked a westward expansion of
oil development on the North Slope, and the petroleum reserve –
the largest single U.S. federal land unit – is seen as a
promising region for new Alaska oil production.
(Reporting by Yereth Rosen; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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