US keeps arctic leasing date despite seismic delay

President Donald Trump's administration is sticking with plans to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to development this year despite a delay in gathering new seismic oil and gas survey data.

The US Interior Department's senior adviser for Alaska affairs, Steve Wackowski, at a public meeting this week announced there would not be any seismic testing in the Alaska refuge this winter, the only season when the tundra is frozen enough to support the heavy equipment needed to conduct the surveys.

That means plans to gather three-dimensional seismic data that would indicate which parts of the refuge's coastal plain are most likely to hold oil and gas will not be ready until 2020 at the earliest. If a lease sale is still held this year, it would force producers to rely mostly on less detailed two-dimensional seismic data gathered more than 30 years ago.

Interior said it would still hold a lease sale this year so long as it is able to finalize an environmental impact statement (EIS) that it released in draft form in December. The coastal plain has long been targeted for development because it holds an estimated 5.7bn-10.4bn of technically recoverable crude and is close to existing infrastructure in Prudhoe Bay.

"There is no requirement that we have to use seismic before a lease sale," Interior said. "If we are able to complete the EIS, we will still hold the lease sale in 2019."

Surveying company SAExploration and two Alaska native corporations last year jointly sought permits to begin seismic testing last December. The companies called for deploying on the tundra a dozen rubber-tracked seismic trucks, each weighing 90,000 pounds, along with personnel carriers, worker camps and a temporary airfield.

But administration officials last year warned the seismic surveys might not happen this winter. Interior assistant secretary for land and minerals management Joe Balash in December said regulators were waiting on permits for polar bears, which build hard-to-spot dens in the snow that could be crushed during surveying. The 35-day government shutdown delayed work on the permits and in seeking comment on the draft EIS.

Taxpayer groups say the plans to lease with out-of-date seismic data make it even less likely that a lease sale will raise the $2bn the Republican-controlled US Congress said it would when opened the refuge to drilling through a 2017 tax cut bill. If every tract in the 1.56mn-acre were leased, it would require an average price of nearly $1,400/acre to generate that amount of revenue.

"We absolutely think taxpayer dollars are at risk, and the accelerated schedule make it all the more problematic for us," Taxpayers for Common Sense vice president Autumn Hanna said.

Oil and gas producers, beyond seismic data collected in 1984-85, can also use data gathered on top producing areas in the Prudhoe Bay and extrapolate it to the refuge based on geologic field data. BP, Chevron and two Alaska native corporations also have data about a well drilled in the refuge in 1986.

But producers still lack robust data on locations of oil, its economic recoverability and the size of the reservoirs holding the resource. That creates the prospect that producers might bid on large amounts of the refuge and wait to start drilling until more data is collected. Environmentalists say they plan to oppose seismic testing because of the effects on the environment.

"The arctic refuge is a near pristine area," Wilderness Society arctic program director Lois Epstein said. "As soon as you are starting to do things, whether it is seismic or surveying, you are going to have an area where wildlife is affected, and perhaps permanently."