“Actions will help a phased, multi-year seismic acquisition program focused to start in 2022,” AIDEA introduced within the press launch. However t
“Actions will help a phased, multi-year seismic acquisition program focused to start in 2022,” AIDEA introduced within the press launch.
However that course of is now on maintain till the brand new environmental impression assertion is accomplished. Within the June 1 secretarial order suspending the leases, DOI stated the supplemental EIS was obligatory due to “a number of authorized deficiencies” within the unique assessment. It additionally acknowledged that any exercise associated to the oil and gasoline leasing program, together with exploration work, could be paused and that any future or pending purposes wouldn’t be processed. The brand new assessment might take a yr or longer, dealing a major setback to the state’s effort to provoke oil and gasoline growth within the coastal plain.
Progressive Democrats in Congress are additionally aiming to reverse the 2017 opening of ANWR to exploration and manufacturing. E&E Information reported final week discussions which might be underway embody language within the finances reconciliation package deal to dam exercise there.
AIDEA was one in every of solely three bidders to purchase up leases within the Arctic Wildlife Refuge throughout the Jan. 6 public sale. The state-owned company now owns the rights to develop seven parcels within the western portion of the coastal plain. Two different non-public corporations every personal one lease. However the Biden administration, after imposing a short lived moratorium on all oil and gasoline leasing exercise within the refuge on its first day in workplace, has since suspended these leases casting a cloud of uncertainty over your complete program.
AIDEA didn’t instantly remark.
Seismic surveys of the coastal plain have solely been performed as soon as earlier than, within the mid-1980s, however know-how has superior significantly since then and the business had hoped to hold out new 3D surveys of the refuge as soon as the realm was opened to grease and gasoline exploration and growth in 2017. Efforts to approve surveys beneath the Trump administration had been unsuccessful largely due to considerations raised by Fish and Wildlife Service over impacts to the Southern Beaufort Sea polar bear inhabitants, which is protected beneath the Endangered Species Act.
One other software for seismic surveys of the refuge submitted by Kaktovik Iñupiat Company in Oct. 2020 has additionally been delayed till the supplemental environmental assessment is full, in response to the DOI spokesperson.
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