Alaska's North slope: Inupiat culture, natural resources dominate Arctic region.

• Author: Barbour, Tracy
• Position: REGIONAL REVIEW

Alaska's North Slope is a place like no other. A resource-rich region that runs from the Brooks Range to the shores of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, the North Slope is renowned for its prolific petroleum production, high-paying oil-industry jobs and extreme weather.

Natural gas in Alaska's North Slope represents the largest-known undeveloped natural gas resource in the United States. Often simply called the "Slope," the region contains the largest oil field in the nation--Prudhoe Bay. Even after more than 30 years of production, Prudhoe Bay ranks among the 20 largest fields ever discovered worldwide. Of the 25 billion barrels of original oil in place, about 13 billion barrels can be recovered with current technology. Today, the field has produced more than 11 billion barrels of oil and is responsible for nearly 40 percent of the state's oil production. Other significant North Slope oil fields include Kuparuk--the second-largest field in North America-Alpine, Milne Point and Liberty.

The North Slope region is also home to several other prominent natural resources, such as the federally owned Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

ANWR occupies 19 million acres in Alaska's northeast comer, and is often at the center of controversy over whether drilling for recoverable oil should be allowed in the 1.5 million acre coastal plain known as the 1002 area.

NPR-A was formerly known as the Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4, and has nearly 100 years history of petroleum exploration. In 1923, President Harding set aside the 23 million acres as an emergency oil supply for the U.S. Navy. In 1976, the administration of the reserve was transferred to the Bureau of Land Management within the U.S. Department of the Interior and renamed the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

The BLM has held five NPR-A lease sales (Northeast in 1999 and 2002, Northwest in 2004 and 2006, Northeast and Northwest in 2008) and currently administers more than 300 federal oil and gas leases.

Alaska's North Slope and adjacent coastal waters provide a critical habitat for migratory birds, polar bears, bowhead whales, beluga whales, walrus, caribou, fish and other wildlife and marine mammals, as well as for the people who depend on their harvest. Many North Slope residents are immersed in a subsistence lifestyle, maintaining the Inupiat culture after thousands of years.

LARGEST BOROUGH

The North Slope Borough is 89,000 square miles across the top of Alaska, about 15 percent of Alaska's land. It is the nation's largest borough and is situated entirely in the Arctic. Around 6,700 people live in the area, according to 2008 population estimates of the Alaska Department of Labor. More than half the region's population resides in...