MEMO TO DEMOCRATS: BIRDS DON'T VOTE (via Gene Brown):

A Quest for Oil Collides With Nature in Alaska (FELICITY BARRINGER, 10/02/05, NY Times)

How the dynamic of exploration, leasing and protest at Teshekpuk (pronounced teh-SHEK-puhk) and other parts of the oil patch plays out is seen by both sides in the debate as a harbinger of what awaits the Arctic shoreline - particularly as Congress prepares to vote this fall on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, east of Teshekpuk.

Henri Bisson, the Alaska director for the federal Bureau of Land Management, sees his office's proposals for leasing Teshekpuk for oil exploration as a blueprint for balancing environmental concerns and energy development on the North Slope.

Speaking of the Arctic refuge, Mr. Bisson said, "If ever there is development there, they'd have to look at what we're doing here, if not as a template, then as a potential development strategy."

But Stan Senner, executive director of Audubon Alaska, dismisses the talk of balance. "Oil companies and the people who are promoting oil development will go where the oil is," Mr. Senner said "and they won't stop at anything to get it."

Just how much oil is in the northeast corner of the reserve is a matter of professional guesses, most of them the proprietary information of companies. In 2002, the United States Geological Survey gave a mean estimate of 9.3 billion barrels, compared with the Arctic refuge's mean estimate of 7.7 billion barrels. The oil is concentrated, the geologists said, in the northern third of the petroleum reserve, which includes Teshekpuk.

Interest in the oil potential of that section of the reserve has grown as the older fields in Prudhoe Bay have passed their production peaks.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the centerpiece of the advanced infrastructure that supports oil development in this forbidding climate, carries only about half its capacity of oil on the 800-mile journey to the Gulf of Alaska from the Beaufort Sea.

"What the industry is saying," said John B. Parry, a financial analyst, "is that we've invested billions of dollars in infrastructure, pipelines and so on, and we've got a 10- to 20-year bridge before we can switch our energy sources. So, do we want to take advantage of the already developed infrastructure of the oil fields to help ourselves?"

Not drilling in a a bug-ridden swamp is a luxury folks are happy to indulge when gas is absurdly cheap, but asking them to continue not to do so when it's over $3 a gallon may be a different story.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 2, 2005 12:01 AM