Alaska Oil

Re "2 Villages, 2 Views of the Dynamics of Oil," April 16: Rushing to despoil the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to solve an immediate demand for oil and gas seems fraught with foolishness. The oil, if found, will not belong to the Native Alaskan people. The oil will belong to the company that drills the wells and owns the lease. The United States will not determine where the oil is sold; the oil company will have that right. The company may or may not sell the oil in the lower 48. It may decide to sell it to Japan or China or any other industrialized country in the market for oil. In the meantime, the damage that has been done will be left to the citizens of the U.S. to clean up. Also, the oil in place in ANWR is as valuable to the U.S. as the national reserve we have been accumulating.

Lifeboats from an oil rig that was temporarily grounded on a small island in southern Alaska may have leaked as much as 272 gallons of diesel fuel into pristine waters along the shoreline, but that cannot be determined until a full inspection is completed, U.S. Coast Guard officials said. A preliminary assessment of four survival boats and one rescue boat at Sitkalidak Island, near Kodiak Island, where the Kulluk rig became stuck along the rocky shore, has revealed that some fuel tanks on the smaller boats were damaged, incident commanders said in a statement late Wednesday.

Lifeboats from an oil rig that was temporarily grounded on a small island in southern Alaska may have leaked as much as 272 gallons of diesel fuel into pristine waters along the shoreline, but that cannot be determined until a full inspection is completed, U.S. Coast Guard officials said. A preliminary assessment of four survival boats and one rescue boat at Sitkalidak Island, near Kodiak Island, where the Kulluk rig became stuck along the rocky shore, has revealed that some fuel tanks on the smaller boats were damaged, incident commanders said in a statement late Wednesday.

SEATTLE - A salvage team was able to board the stranded Kulluk oil rig where it remained beached Wednesday on a remote Alaska shoreline, and authorities said there was still no evidence of fuel leakage into the churning surf. But questions remained about whether the fuel tanks aboard the vessel were completely undamaged, Coast Guard Capt. Paul Mehler, the federal response commander, said at a briefing Wednesday night. Authorities are primarily worried that fuel stored on board the vessel could leak and endanger the abundant wildlife that populates that part of the Gulf of Alaska - only a few hundred miles from where the Exxon Valdez leaked a tanker full of oil into Prince William Sound in 1989 and devastated fisheries for years.

President Clinton lifted a 23-year-old ban on exporting Alaska's North Slope oil, but imposed conditions aimed at protecting the environment. Under the conditions, ships must remain outside a 200-mile economic zone so they stay far from mainland coastal waters and from environmentally sensitive areas along the Aleutian Islands. Ships also must be equipped with satellite communications systems to permit Coast Guard monitoring.

The federal government will take a broad new look at the environmental impact of oil drilling in Alaska and will require better safeguards against accidents as a result of the massive oil spill in Prince William Sound, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Sunday. "I think we're going to take the environmental planning completely apart for every aspect of Alaska oil development and make sure that it is as sound, as careful as we can possibly make it," EPA Administrator William K.

Opponents of ending the federal ban on Alaskan crude oil exports released a study Friday that questions whether lifting the prohibition would create jobs in California, as the state's independent producers and U.S. Department of Energy research predict. The new study disputes the argument that West Coast oil prices are artificially depressed by the export ban, as the Energy Department and producers claim.

Atlantic Richfield Co. has agreed to sell its Alaskan oil fields to Phillips Petroleum Co. for $6 billion to $7 billion in an attempt to win U.S. regulatory approval of the Los Angeles-based oil company's acquisition by BP Amoco, people familiar with the transaction said Tuesday. The companies may announce the sale today, the sources said.

Charging that Republicans are slowing the work of the Senate, Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) on Friday offered a "compromise proposal" to allow a vote on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The catch, however, was that the vote would succeed only if 60 of the 100 members join to support it. The proposal came a day after President Bush added his voice to those calling for an energy bill this year--for the sake of national security.

Secret negotiations have cleared away the key obstacle to lifting the ban on export of Alaskan crude oil, a move that could lead to the revival of California's moribund oil industry and create thousands of jobs in the state. Independent California oil producers estimate that ending the export ban could trim more than $2 billion annually from the U.S. trade deficit with Japan, the likeliest market for the oil. Until now, U.S. maritime unions--whose crews by law now tanker the Alaskan oil to U.S.

Coast Guard emergency teams continue to wait and watch a grounded oil rig in southern Alaska on Wednesday morning for signs of leakage. Stormy weather is delaying efforts to get people onto the Kulluk rig to make a closer assessment. Meanwhile, a "full-scale" response operation is being marshaled -- just in case. "There's no sign of any leakage," Coast Guard spokesman Sam Sacco told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.  "Just as a contingency, a full-scale response operation is being put in place, but the fact is, there is no leakage of chemicals into the water.

An offshore drilling rig remained beached on a remote island in southern Alaska Tuesday, but authorities said there was as yet no evidence that it had leaked any of the more than 150,000 gallons of fuel and other petroleum products on board into the pristine waters nearby. “Right now … the Kulluk [rig] is sound. There is no sign of a breach of the hull; there is no sign of release of any product,” U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Paul Mehler, the federal on-scene commander for what is becoming a major response effort, said at a news conference.

The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska just isn't what it used to be - or rather, what we thought it was. Until about two years ago, the 23-million-acre spread of land was thought to hold a treasure-trove of 10.6 billion barrels of black gold. Then research by the U.S. Geological Survey brought the figure way down, to less than a tenth of that amount. Yet the reserve is rich in other features, among them wildlife and the fragile ecosystems in which it lives. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wisely recognized both kinds of resources in drafting the first comprehensive plan for the reserve.

A modern-day oil boom in states like Texas and North Dakota has helped the U.S. reduce its dependency on foreign oil to the lowest levels in 12 years. Unfortunately, California isn't benefitting, and steady declines in the state's production will leave it increasingly dependent on expensive foreign crude in the future. Of the nation's five top oil-producing states, only two have seen steady drops since February 2006. They are California and Alaska, according to Energy Department statistics.

In 1977, one of the engineering marvels of the modern world made its debut: the trans-Alaska pipeline, 48 inches of steel traversing 800 miles, three mountain ranges and more than 800 rivers and streams. In its heyday in the 1980s, the pipeline carried as much as 2.1 million barrels of oil a day from America's largest oil field at Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez. Alaska was transformed into a petro state with an oil savings account worth $33.3 billion. Today, however, the pipeline is carrying only about 660,000 barrels of oil a day, and production from the North Slope's aging fields is set to steadily decline over the next decade.

Seeking funds to pay for the biggest U.S. oil spill in history, BP is in talks to sell its Alaska oil fields and some other assets to Houston-based Apache Corp., two people familiar with the discussions said Sunday. Apache, the largest independent U.S. oil company by market value, is negotiating for assets that include a share in BP's Alaska business for a price of less than $12 billion, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions aren't public.

I appreciated the commentary by Jimmy Carter on the next Alaska oil drill and spill. I guess he's our only living ex-President! BOB FISK, Laguna Hills

An Exxon exhibit boasting of the company's efforts to clean up its Alaska oil spill has been removed from the Anchorage federal building, officials said. The display had been mounted in the building where Exxon Corp. and Exxon Shipping Co. face charges and civil suits in U.S. District Court.

The federal agency responsible for overseeing oil drilling near the coast of Alaska was rebuked by government overseers Wednesday for failing to share potentially important environmental information with all staffers drafting policy on oil and gas development. The Government Accountability Office, in a report to Congress, also criticized the federal Minerals Management Service's Alaska office for failing to adopt a set of comprehensive guidelines for determining whether proposed developments comply with federal environmental law. Reviewers found that much data on proposed oil development -- some of which oil companies consider proprietary -- is distributed only on a "need to know" basis and doesn't reach all staff analysts reviewing projects.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin may have swept into office as an independent thinker willing to challenge the establishment, but she has fallen in line with other Alaska politicians when it comes to environmental policies, according to interviews and a review of her record. Palin, who was chosen Friday as presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate, favored increased oil and gas drilling in sensitive lands and waterways, opposed federal action to list the polar bear as a species threatened with extinction and supports a controversial program to allow aerial shooting of wolves and bears as a means of predator control.