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Cook Inletkeeper
OIL AND
GAS LEASING
As oil and gas prices remain
high, and old reserves ebb further toward decline, a second
energy boom has descended on Cook Inlet.
For example, despite low
industry interest, the Bush Administration continues to offer 2+
million acres of the rich and productive fish habitat for
offshore oil and gas leasing in the frontier waters of lower
Cook Inlet under the Minerals Management Service’s latest 5-year
plan. And for the first time in fifteen years, an oil and gas
corporation, Escopeta Oil, plans to bring a jack-up rig to
drill several offshore prospects in upper Cook Inlet. Under the
State’s areawide leasing scheme, the Division of Oil and Gas
will lease an additional 2 million acres of open-water, tidal
and estuarine fisheries habitat each year through 2007, in areas
where the state already has issued hundreds of leases. The
Administration is also pressing to expand oil and gas
development in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, a Refuge
important to brown bear and spawning salmon. And while Cook
Inletkeeper has made significant progress staving off a new wave
of coalbed methane (CBM) development in Cook Inlet, the State
continues to look to BLM and state lands as prospects for CBM
leasing in prime salmon spawning habitats.
Cook Inletkeeper will work in
the year ahead to critique leasing proposals in Cook Inlet, and
ensure no new development or exploration occurs in sensitive
areas.
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