Seeking a balance between oil development and the environment, the Clinton administration announced Thursday it will open nearly 4 million acres of a federal reserve on Alaska's North Slope to oil development.
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said that a portion of the most ecologically sensitive part of the reserve would be off limits to drill-ing, including a strip of coastal marshland that environmentalists consider critical for millions of migratory birds and other wildlife."This is a good plan based on sound science," Babbitt said at a news coference. "We have barred or limited oil and gas development in key environmentally sensitive areas."
"At the same time," he continued, "We will be allowing oil and gas development on almost 4 million acres."
A number of oil companies, including Arco Alaska and British Petroleum, have expressed intense interest in drilling in the government reserve just west of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields.
Another North Slope target of oil companies, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the east of the Prudhoe Bay fields, continues to be off limits. The administration has staunchly opposed drilling in the refuge.
Development of the government's National Petroleum Reserve in far northern Alaska- a 23 million acre area the size of Indiana - has been controversial for years.
Conservationists fear oil production will harm ecologically critical wetlands, lagoons and marshes that dot the reserve's coastal plain and each summer attract millions of migratory birds as well as caribou and polar bears.
But oil executives contend the fields can be developed and wildlife and its habitat protected at the same time.
Babbitt's plan, which follows 18 months of study, fell short of what the oil industry had wanted. Oil companies had argued that they could drill in the environmentally sensitive coastal area of the reserve without harming bird habitat and other wildlife.
Under the plan, a coastal area of shallow lakes and marshes, east of and including Teshekpuk Lake, will be unavailable for leasing.
Actual oil production from the government reserve, which was established in 1923 to ensure the availability of oil for the Navy, was not expected for several years. Estimates on the extent of oil deposits beneath the reserve's tundra have ranged from 400 million barrels to more than 3 billion barrels.