Oil Drilling Alaska

The Clinton administration said Thursday that it will open 4 million acres of pristine wetlands and river valleys along Alaska's vast North Slope to new oil production, the biggest expansion of Arctic oil development in decades.

The Clinton administration said it has agreed to explore the oil prospects in an Arctic Coast petroleum reserve, a move Alaska had sought to boost its sagging oil income. The Interior Department plans to study potential drilling areas and the environmental steps that would be needed to protect wildlife in the northeastern part of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

The Interior Department and nine oil companies reached agreement Monday on the surrender of drilling leases off southwestern Florida and in Alaska's Bristol Bay, assuring protection of the environmentally fragile coastal waters. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said the agreement "closes the door for oil and gas development offshore the Everglades and in Bristol Bay, now and for the foreseeable future."

Every summer a wind-raked, bug-ridden stretch of Arctic desolation briefly transforms itself into the Alaskan equivalent of a teeming East African savanna. It is that way again this year. An extravaganza of caribou, grizzly bears, wolves, foxes and musk ox has begun its promenade through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as if the looming prospect of an oil field in the midst of wilderness was one more crystal mirage on the polar horizon.