Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Alaska on Friday said it was willing to forego lease sales in the environmentally sensitive Teshekpuk Lake area of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA) if a federal judge would allow the remainder of the scheduled lease sale in the northeast corner of the reserve to proceed.

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, BLM attorneys asked Judge James Singleton to “do no more than enjoin lease sales” in the area north and east of Teshekpuk Lake, while allowing the rest of the lease sale to take place. The sale is scheduled for Sept. 27, but it’s not known when Singleton will respond to the latest filing.

Singleton earlier in the month ruled that the BLM’s environmental review of the NPRA lease sale had failed to “adequately address the cumulative effects” of oil and gas drilling near the environmentally sensitive Teshekpuk Lake in Alaska’s North Slope region. The judge, in his decision, temporarily halted what would be the fourth lease sale in the NPRA since 1999.

BLM in court documents Friday said that while it “[did] not consent to the entry of such an order” that would block the sale in the Teshekpuk Lake area, it “believes that the ability to go forward with some leasing in the [northeast] NPRA is in the public interest.”

Several environmental groups, including the National Audubon Society of Alaska and the Wilderness League, filed the lawsuit challenging Interior’s decision to allow the lease sale in the 23-million acre reserve.

The proposed sale also has come under fire from lawmakers on Capitol Hill as well. In August, 66 House lawmakers urged Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to table plans for the oil and gas lease sale in the NPRA. “Industry already has access to 87% of the [northeast] area of the reserve, and providing them access to the remainder jeopardizes caribou and waterfowl populations and subsistence resources in one of the most important wetland complexes in the Arctic,” the coalition of lawmakers said (see NGI, Aug. 14).

A group of 19 Senate Democrats led by Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico echoed those concerns, and asked Kempthorne to take a closer look at the issues surrounding the sale (see NGI, July 10).

In its initial announcement, BLM proposed to offer 696 tracts on more than eight million acres in the northeast and northwest planning areas of the NPRA. The sale was to include the reoffering of leases on 183,200 acres that have been relinquished since the 2002 lease sale, as well as about 373,000 acres north of Teshekpuk Lake.

Interior estimates that the federal lands in the NPRA contain between 5.9 and 13.2 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil resources and 39 to 83 Tcf of natural gas. The department believes that the northeast corner of the NPRA contains enough oil and gas resources to help stem the production decline from the maturing fields in the North Slope.

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