U.S. Interior hears Alaskans on offshore drilling
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar heard hours of Alaskans' opinions about drilling for oil and gas off their state's shores and came away on Tuesday promising a plan to allow development while accounting for environmental risks.
"I think everything is on the table. We are not prejudging the outcome of this process," Salazar said at a news conference held during a break in a special public meeting in Anchorage.
Salazar came to Alaska as part of four meetings in different U.S. regions to gather public input on a five-year offshore leasing plan that he says was rushed in the last days of the Bush administration.
That plan, issued in January, calls for aggressive offshore development in many areas previously off-limits to drilling. The Bush plan called for nine lease sales off Alaska between 2010 and 2015. Sales would be held in the Chukchi Sea, Beaufort Sea, Cook Inlet and the North Aleutian Basin, which encompasses Bristol Bay, site of the world's biggest sockeye salmon runs.
"The people of Alaska care very passionately about this issue. There is not any single voice," he said at the news conference. "Whatever we do, there are going to be some people who are disappointed."
Salazar on Monday went to Dillingham, a Bristol Bay village where most residents oppose offshore drilling as too risky to the fish runs.
In Anchorage, Salazar heard from drilling supporters, including Gov. Sarah Palin, who frequently used the pro-development slogan "Drill, Baby, Drill" in her unsuccessful vice presidential run last fall.
Palin suggested that without expanded offshore drillings, the trans-Alaska oil pipeline may close due to low flow. It now carries only a third of the 2 million barrels per day it carried in 1988.
"Once the pipeline shuts down, it will mean the end of oil production from the North Slope," she said.
Alaska's outer continental shelf -- federal waters generally located three miles offshore -- could hold about 27 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, government estimates show.
Despite that hydrocarbon potential and a history of lease sales dating back to the 1970s, very little production or exploration has occurred in federal waters off Alaska. The only oil ever produced from federal waters has been from a corner of BP's (BP.L) Northstar field, an offshore unit in the Beaufort Sea that lies mostly on state leases close to shore. Only five exploration wells have ever been drilled in the vast Chukchi Sea.
(Reporting by Yereth Rosen; Editing by Bernie Woodall, Gary Hill)
