A very large oil spill in Alaska's Chukchi Sea could take as long as 74 days to contain and could spill as much as 2.2 million barrels, a new environmental study released by regulators on Friday concluded.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement released a revised draft supplemental environmental impact statement of the impacts of Lease Sale 193, which encompasses millions of acres off Alaska's north coast. The study was ordered by a federal court, which last July ruled that the government failed to adequately analyze the impact of natural gas development and also failed to analyze the importance of missing scientific data.
The ruling came after environmental groups sued to block the sale, which occurred in 2008.
In addition to the analysis ordered by the court, BOEM added an evaluation of a very large oil spill (VLOS) in the wake of last year's massive BP Macondo-well spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
"This Revised Draft SEIS offers additional scientific, environmental and technical analysis that will assist in future decisions pertaining to the leases issued in Sale 193 in the Chukchi Sea," BOEM Director Michael Bromwich said in a statement. "Because of what is at stake, it is extremely important that we continue to make this a transparent process that encourages the maximum amount of public participation."
The revised study will be published in the federal Register on May 27. Several public hearings will be held, with all comment due by July 11. BOEM said it plans to issue a final decision by a court-ordered deadline of October 3.
"It's my hope that this additional analysis on the potential impacts on the region will help resolve the legal challenges that have held up resource exploration in the Chukchi Sea," Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican-Alaska, said Friday in a statement. "There's still a lot of process yet to occur, but this is a step in the right direction."
The initial EIS only evaluated the impact of oil drilling and oil spills, but did not specifically analyze the impact of drilling for gas only.
The new study concludes that the impacts of gas wells would be similar to those of oil wells or operations producing both oil and gas. The new study also concluded that the missing information in the original analysis was not critical to the leasing decisions made by regulators.
"BOEMRE analysts determined that while many statements of incomplete or unavailable information were broadly relevant to the important issues at hand, none were essential for a reasoned choice among alternatives," the revised SEIS stated.
Chukchi Sea Lease Sale 193 was held in February 2008. The government accepted bids for 487 leases encompassing 2.8 million acres. The sale netted the government $2.6 billion.
A coalition of environmental and native Alaska groups challenged the lease sale in 2008.
A number of companies, including BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips, purchased leases in the sale. Shell had planned to begin drilling in the Chukchi this summer, but was delayed by legal challenges and then by an informal moratorium imposed by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar after BP's Macondo well blew out April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the largest marine oil spill in US history.
Before BP installed the sealing cap July 15, Macondo had released an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil, including 800,000 barrels captured by BP in a variety of collection devices deployed during the crisis phase.
