January 15, 2018 — Last week, the Trump administration unveiled an extreme proposal to open nearly all United States federal waters off Alaska to offshore oil and gas leasing. Under the Draft Proposed Program for the 2019-2024 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, only the North Aleutian Basin (which contains Bristol Bay) would be safe from potential oil and gas leasing activity. Areas such as the Gulf of Alaska that have not seen a lease sale since the early 1980s, and regions that have never been considered for exploration like the Aleutians, Bering Sea and Kodiak have suddenly been put at risk.
The Gulf of Alaska faced oil and gas lease sales when the first federal offshore leases were offered in Alaska as part of the 1976-1981 program. At that time, 600,000 acres of the seafloor, starting 10 miles off Cape Suckling and stretching to Yakutat, were leased and twelve exploratory wells were drilled. None yielded commercially significant quantities of oil or gas, and thankfully there were no catastrophes from this misguided effort. Further sales were scheduled between 1997 and 2002, but were canceled due to a lack of interest from industry. It was a bad idea then, and it is a bad idea now.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) now estimates the recoverable oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Alaska at around 600 million barrels of oil. Current U.S. consumption is about 20 million barrels per day. In other words, burning through the estimated Gulf of Alaska oil reserves might fuel our country for a mere month. BOEM’s low estimate of environmental and social costs of exploration activities and “small” spills (up to 4 million gallons!) is a staggering $100 million. That doesn’t even include the costs of a catastrophic oil spill, like BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, which they claim they will analyze later.
The Gulf of Alaska ecosystem is already stressed, and many fishermen will tell you that things do not look good. Halibut are smaller, Chinook salmon are disappearing, and the Pacific cod stock is collapsing. To add the stress of offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling to the mix is both thoughtless and irresponsible.
Read the full story at the Cordova Times