Beneath the scarcely evocative name of “National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska” is a stunning sweep of landscape, remarkable even in Alaska, where a grand scale is the only scale. The Reserve encompasses 23.5 million acres of wild land and exceptional wildlife habitat.

Some of the richest of all is in the Teshekpuk Lake area in the Reserve’s northeast corner, the 4.6 million-acre Northeast Planning Area. The area is one of the most important wetland complexes in the entire circumpolar Arctic, with a wildlife-rich network of coastal lagoons, deep-water lakes, wet sedge grass meadows, and river deltas. The Teshekpuk Lake area provides essential molting-season habitat for nearly a third of all the brant geese in the Pacific Flyway, which represent just a portion of the millions of waterfowl, shorebirds and songbirds that nest in the area.

The Reserve’s northeast corner also sustains the 45,000 caribou in the Teshekpuk Lake herd, on which hunters from seven Native communities rely for subsistence harvests. The entire Teshekpuk Lake wetland complex provides critical subsistence hunting and fishing for residents of several North Slope and Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Native villages, including Barrow and Nuiqsut.

President Warren Harding established the Naval Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in 1923. The Congress transferred management of it to the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 1976 and required the Department to provide “maximum protection” for the Reserve’s critical biological and cultural resources. Although “petroleum” is in the Reserve's name, the Congress and a succession of Interior secretaries have recognized Teshekpuk Lake's surpassing natural values. Even Reagan Administration Interior Secretary James Watt, no friend of wild things and wild places, put more than 200,000 acres just north of the lake off-limits to oil and gas leasing.

In the Clinton years, Secretary Bruce Babbitt went further, establishing the Teshekpuk Lake Surface Protection Area of more than 850,000 acres and closing nearly 600,000 acres to leasing. The balance of the Reserve’s northeast planning area remained open to leasing without surface occupancy.

The central fear is that oil and gas activity would inevitably fragment core habitat for caribou, geese and other species – habitat that should remain unbroken to maintain its extraordinary ecological value.

Over the strong objections of Native people, wildlife biologists, sportsmen’s groups, and the general public, the Bureau of Land Management remains intent on leasing one of the most remarkable wetlands complexes on the planet. A decades-long record of special care for Teshekpuk Lake ended abruptly in January 2006 when the Bureau of Land Management decided to open the entire area to leasing. Until then, 87 percent of the area had been open to oil and gas leasing, but the Record of Decision announced in January 2006 made 100 percent of the Northeast Planning Area, which included Teshekpuk Lake and the area around it, open for oil company leasing.

Conservation groups, Native communities, sportsmen, and scientists oppose the plan. Even other federal agencies, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, have voiced strong concerns. The central fear is that oil and gas activity would inevitably fragment core habitat for caribou, geese and other species – habitat that should remain unbroken to maintain its extraordinary ecological value.  

On August 31, 2006, the North Slope Borough (the municipal government for the villages on Alaska’s North Slope) wrote a strongly worded letter asking Interior Secretary Kempthorne to postpone or cancel the Teshekpuk Lake lease sale.

On September 25, 2006, the U.S. District Court for Alaska issued a strongly worded decision finding that that the Department of Interior failed to consider the cumulative environmental impacts of widespread oil and gas drilling in the NPR-A, a key point in conservation groups’ arguments against the plan to lease the area around Teshekpuk Lake. The ruling vacated the 2006 ROD and has forced the BLM to postpone its planned lease sale of more than 400,000 acres in the Teshekpuk Lake area while it conducts a new environmental analysis. Of course, the threat to Teshekpuk Lake and the surrounding area remains as long as the oil companies and the Interior Department are committed to drilling in the area.  

The Bush Administration has placed oil development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and the waters offshore in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas among its top priorities, and has pursued an unprecedented, aggressive program of leasing over the past five years. Since 2001, the Department of Interior has made available for leasing and development more than 21 million acres in the Northwest Planning Area, Northeast Planning Area (containing Teshekpuk Lake) and the Beaufort Sea. Oil companies have purchased leases to nearly three million acres. Oil companies are actively exploring and preparing to drill on these leases .

The history of North Slope drilling is a history of oil companies’ broken promises.

Drilling around Teshekpuk Lake would inevitably lead to fragmentation of what should be unbroken, core wildlife habitat for molting geese and caribou during the calving and post-calving seasons. Molting geese are flightless, so they are especially sensitive to disturbance, as are female caribou that are pregnant or with calves and all caribou during periods of intense harassment by insects. Although BLM’s 2006 leasing plan included a complicated package of “no surface occupancy” zones and other restrictions, the rules are full of loopholes. The plan would result in the fragmentation of this core habitat area by roads, pipelines, air strips, gravel mines, drilling pads, processing and staging facilities, and other oilfield infrastructure.

The Prudhoe Bay oil fields and Trans-Alaska Pipeline have caused an average of more than 500 spills annually on the North Slope since 1996, according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. More than 1.7 million gallons of toxic substances have been spilled in the last six years alone. In March 2006, Alaska’s North Slope witnessed the largest oil leak in its history (up to 267,000 gallons).

The history of North Slope drilling is a history of oil companies’ broken promises. Over the last decade, BP's Alaska operations consistently failed to live up to the company’s carefully crafted environmentally friendly image. Together with ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil, the British oil giant controls 95 percent of Alaska's North Slope oil production and the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. As these hugely profitable corporations set their sights on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the environmentally sensitive Teshekpuk Lake, their failure to live up to their past promises now places the sensitive environment of Alaska’s North Slop at risk of the same threats.

A truly balanced approach to the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska would provide meaningful, lasting protection for key natural areas and wildlife habitat, while permitting responsible development elsewhere that creates an aggressive, well-funded program of oversight and enforcement of environmental protection laws and regulations.

The Wilderness Society and its partners believe the Interior Department should abandon, once and for all, its plans to allow drilling in the area around Teshekpuk Lake. That is precisely what we urge now. Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne has the perfect opportunity to take this step and every reason to do so: the area’s unique ecological and cultural importance, and the continued opposition from Alaska Natives, conservationists and wildlife professionals.

Eleanor Huffines, The Wilderness Society, 907/272 9453
Stan Senner, Audubon Alaska 907/276-7034
Pam Miller, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, 907/452-5021