A New Day for NPR-A is the long dry spell over?

• Author: PREVOST, JIM
• Position: National Petroleum Reserve Alaska receives funds from federal Bureau of Land Management - Statistical Data Included

On Jan. 10 the State of Alaska received a wire transfer from the federal Bureau of Land Management of $40,222,795.50, the state's share of proceeds from last May's $104 million federal oil & gas lease sale in National Petroleum Reserve Alaska. It was the first payday for the state from oil-related activity on North Slope federal land since 1983.

The first BLM offering in 1982 generted $71.3 million for leases on almost 700,000 acres. Over the next two years, four more sales were conducted, each attended by further declining interest. In July 1984, with oil selling for $10 per barrel, they gave a sale and nobody came.

The leases awarded during 1982 and '83 were scattered throughout the 23-million-acre reserve. There were large blocks southwest of Umiat and south of Barrow, and smaller parcels near the Colville River in the southcentral area of NPR-A.

Within all these leases, the only exploratory well ever drilled was Arco Alaska Inc.'s Brontosaurus, southwest of Barrow, abandoned as a dry hole in 1983.

Limited exploration technology, distance of likely prospects from existing infrastructure, and the economic malaise of the '80s conspired against any resurgent interest in NPR-A until 1994, when Arco and Anadarko found the 400 million-barrel Alpine field near the Colville River delta, just outside the reserve's eastern boundary.

Alpine, set to begin production this summer, brought pipeline access within a stone's throw of NPR-A. This closer proximity to a transportation system, combined with more efficient, environmentally friendly exploratory drilling techniques, rekindled the interest of both industry and government.

Gov. Tony Knowles Administration Press Secretary Bob King gives his boss most of the credit for persuading federal officials to reopen the reserve.

"It took a lot of work to convince the Interior Department to go ahead with this," King said. "There was the same opposition to this leasing program that there has been to other leasing efforts, but the governor invited the Interior Secretary to go up to the refuge, accompanied him on a brief visit to NPR-A and talked about improvements to technology, and he finally allowed it."

BLM Alaska spokesperson Anne Jeffery agrees that Knowles played a major role in the process, but says renewed desire to find more oil was the driving force behind the decision to allow a lease sale.

"If there had been no industry interest, there would have been no reason to do it," Jeffery said. "But the...