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Drilling leases condemned

A chunk of real estate off Alaska just smaller than Pennsylvania will be opened to petroleum leases.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The federal government will open nearly 46,000 square miles off Alaska's northwest coast to petroleum leases next month, a decision reviled by enviromental groups that contend the industrial activity will harm northern marine mammals.

The Minerals Management Service planned the sale in the Chukchi Sea without taking into account changes brought on by global warming and proposed insufficient protections for polar bears, walrus, whales and other species that could be harmed by drilling rigs or spills, according to the groups.

The lease sale in an area slightly smaller than the state of Pennsylvania was planned without information as basic as the polar bear and walrus populations, said Pamela A. Miller, Arctic coordinator with Northern Alaska Environmental Center.

The MMS announced it would hold a lease sale Feb. 6 in Anchorage for the ocean floor on the outer continental shelf of the Chukchi Sea, the body of water that begins north of the Bering Strait and stretches between northwest Alaska and the northern coast of the Russian Far East.

The MMS is a branch of the Interior Department. Its mission is to manage ocean energy and mineral resources on the outer continental shelf and federal and Indian mineral revenues to enhance public and trust benefits, promote responsible use and realize fair value.

It would be the first U.S. oil and gas lease sale on the outer continental shelf in the Chukchi Sea since 1991. The agency estimates it contains 15-billion barrels of conventionally recoverable oil and 77-trillion cubic feet of conventionally recoverable natural gas.

[Last modified January 3, 2008, 01:43:07]