Public Testimony:
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan

Statement of Senator Lisa Murkowski, U.S. Senator, Alaska for U.S. fish and Wildlife Service Scoping hearing on ANWR CCP Plan, 5-11-10

• Hi, I’m Greg Kaplan, a representative in Senator Lisa Murkowski’s Anchorage office and I’m here representing the Senator. While she and all members of the state’s Congressional Delegation submitted a formal letter to the May 4 scoping hearing held in Washington, she asked that I attend again today to reinforce the message that she has strong concerns with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal to include the 1.5-million acres of the Arctic Coastal Plain within the areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that the Service may be considering for expanded wilderness designations during revision of the Comprehensive Conservation Plan (CCP) for the 19.6-million-acre refuge.
• The Senator’s concern is that even considering whether to propose wilderness in the Refuge is a violation of Sections 1001 and 1002 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Section 1001(b)3 of ANILCA did call for the Secretary of the Interior and related agencies to study “and make recommendations for protection of the wildlife resources” of the coastal plain, and Section 1001 (c) besides calling for that study to cover the potential of oil and gas resources, did call for the Secretary “to consider the national interest in preservation of the wilderness characteristics of the lands.”
• But ANILCA in Section 1001 (e) specifically limited that study period for wilderness considerations in ANWR’s coastal plain to eight years from the date of signing of the Act. The 1986 EIS specifically addressed the wilderness issue and rejected Alternative “E”, the wilderness designation, saying that “such a designation is not necessary to protect the 1002 area environment and is not in the best interest of the nation.”
• Now, 22 years later the deadline has more than passed for such consideration in the coastal plain. It is true that while Section 1004 of ANILCA did call on Interior to study the suitability and to manage the refuge to preserve the option for a wilderness classification of the refuge’s coastal plain, the deadline for both those actions too was clearly eight years after the Act’s passage.
• More importantly, Section 1002 clearly says that the coastal plain may not be opened to oil or gas or placed in wilderness without Congressional direction. The Service in your own planning update acknowledges that this is an issue that can only be resolved by Congress, so there truly is no reason for the Service to spend one dime, or one minute of time considering wilderness inside the coastal plain as part of the revised refuge planning effort.
• And Section 1326(a) of ANILCA specifically states that administrative closures, including use of the Antiquities Act, of more than 5,000 acres can’t be used ever again in Alaska. And Section 1326(b) adds even more emphasis to the “No More” Clause, by saying that federal agencies are not even allowed to study lands for consideration for set-asides unless Congress specifically authorizes the study. That clearly has not been done for the Arctic coastal plain.
• Obviously Senator Murkowski believes the Nation and State would be best served if ANWR’s coastal plain’s oil and natural gas were open for development. She has sponsored or co-sponsored a host of bills to fully open the plain to environmentally sensitive exploration during her time in office. And she just last year was joined by Sen. Begich in introducing a modified bill to permit oil and gas development from the refuge, but without surface disturbances using directional extended reach drilling from state lands or waters to tap the resources that lie 8,000 to 10,000 feet under the coastal plain without a caribou, muskoxen or bird ever being disturbed.
• On shore development of ANWR has always been the least environmentally disruptive option for this nation to obtain the oil and gas that it needs, at least until renewable and alternative energy can come into widespread use. Tapping oil from on-shore or from shallow waters offshore, certainly has far fewer risks than from deep-water areas offshore – as recent events in the Gulf of Mexico may reinforce.
• And the Arctic coastal plain is still considered the most prospective place for a large on-shore oil discovery in the United States. Given rapidly increasing global crude oil prices, most all of the 10.3 billion barrels of oil likely in the coastal plain are economically recoverable today based on the mean forecast, and most all of the 16 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, are recoverable if the high-end estimate proves correct. That is orders of magnitude more oil than estimated from the BP Mississippi Canyon discovery in the Gulf of Mexico.
• And the coastal plain, while it holds only a currently estimated 8-10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, still could be an important source of gas to make an Alaska overland natural gas project even more economic.
• The Senator in the Delegation’s previous letter noted that Alaska already is home to nearly 58 million acres of wilderness -- 97% of all the wilderness that is controlled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service nationwide. ANWR already is home to more than 8 million acres of formal wilderness, and home to several Wild and Scenic Rivers, including the Ivishak, Sheenjek and Wind Rivers; the state already containing more than 3,000 miles of wild and scenic river designations.
• There is no need for the coastal plain to be designated wilderness to protect the wildlife that visit the plain in summer.
• And the Senator has another concern that the coastal plain actually does not fit the standard for wilderness designation required by the Wilderness Act of 1964. The act says wilderness is “where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” (16 U.S.C. 11-31-1136 (4)c).
• But man – Alaska Natives -- has not only visited and trekked across but lived on the coastal plain and off of its resources for the last 11,000 years, according to archeologists. While commercial whalers visited the plain’s coast from 1890 on, a permanent settlement-trading post was established on the plain in 1923 on Barter Island. That settlement, while it has moved several times, most recently in 1964, is now the Village of Kaktovik and is home to nearly 300 residents with their attending roads and buildings.
• In the 1920s under the auspices of the Alaska Reindeer Service, several herds of reindeer were established in ANWR with herders following the reindeer from the foothills in the winter months to grazing lands on the coast each summer. While the severe winters of 1936 and 1937 resulted in the starvation of most of the reindeer, including a herd of 3,000 animals bought to the refuge from Barrow in 1936, the very process of reindeer herding would argue against the plain not being a place of human habitation. The plain was also heavily used for fur trapping in the 1920s and early 1930s, until fox fur prices dropped.
• The area was the site of a Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line system station from the 1940s on – the military still maintaining a presence on the coastal plain.
• And another big reason the coastal plain should not qualify for wilderness designation is its history of oil and gas exploration. Since Ernest Leffingwell explored the region in the early 1900s, man has worked in the area. There have been geological investigations, aeromagnetic surveys, and hundreds of miles of seismic surveys of the coastal plain conducted in 1983-84 and again in 1984-85. The Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation drilled a test well in the refuge in 1985.
• There simply is no legal reason and no solid policy reason to include the coastal plain in any consideration of calls for additional wilderness to be designated in the refuge. And there are a host of reasons not to include it, the nation’s need for the energy that may well lie beneath the refuge being foremost.
• A wilderness designation would preclude even considering the use of new technology, such as directional drilling, to tap the oil and gas reserves of the area, even if the actions would cause no surface disturbances.
• In fact, if the study team even considers studying the area for a wilderness recommendation, it should authorize new winter-time seismic data acquisition because it is impossible to weigh the merits of a wilderness designation recommendation for the coastal plain, without knowing, using modern 3-D and 4-D seismic technology, the likely resources of the area.
• On behalf of Senator Murkowski let me conclude that she appreciates you considering elevating the remaining scoping meetings in Alaska to the level of a hearing, so that Alaskans know that their strong views on this subject will be taken fully into account. Alaskans by statewide public opinion polling have consistently supported oil and natural gas development from the coastal plain.
• According to the Dittman Research Corp. from November 1990 to the present, approval for exploration and development in the area has consistently averaged 71%-25% in support. While this hearing may not hear from all of the supporters, it at least provides an opportunity for Alaskans to make their views on this subject be more clearly felt by the CCP planning team. Thank you for your time.