Oil Energy Thread (oih)

[madrose1]

US says will pull Alaska wetlands from oil drilling
Sat Sep 23, 2006 9:47pm ET
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-09-24T014702Z_01_N...


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a win for environmentalists, the U.S. Interior Department says it is willing to withdraw sensitive wetlands from a large area in Alaska's western Arctic region that it wanted to open next week to oil and natural gas drilling.

The U.S. District Court of Alaska earlier this month blocked the department's plan to allow energy development on lands around Teshekpuk Lake in the National Petroleum Reserve, saying the government's assumptions about the environmental impact of drilling in the area were faulty.

The department told the court on Thursday it would pull the wetlands in dispute so the matter could be studied further, but it asked for energy exploration to continue on the other lands in the planned lease sale on Wednesday.


In its filing with the court, the department said, "The ability to go forward with some leasing in the (petroleum reserve) is in the public interest."

The department's Bureau of Land Management initially wanted to offer energy companies the opportunity to search for crude oil and natural gas on about 8 million acres (3.2 million hectares) in the petroleum reserve.

Environmentalists were concerned because 373,000 acres

north of the reserve's Teshekpuk Lake were also being put up for lease for the first time.

The reserve is estimated to hold between 5.9 billion and 13.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 39 trillion to 83 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Two billion barrels of oil may be around Teshekpuk Lake alone, the BLM said