The Interior Department on Wednesday made 2.6 million acres of potentially oil-rich territory in northern Alaska available for energy exploration. At the same time, it deferred for a decade any decision to open 600,000 acres of land north of Teshekpuk Lake that is the summer home of thousands of migrating caribou and millions of waterfowl.

The decision will open up for drilling much of the northeast section of the Northeast National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, holding an estimated 3.7 billion barrels of oil, Tom Lonnie, Alaska state director for the Bureau of Land Management, said in a conference call with reporters.

The northeast and northwest portions of the reserve could yield eight billion barrels of oil, he said. Mr. Lonnie said he expected the first oil production to begin in the easternmost part of the reserve, west of the Colville River, from 2010 to
2012. A fully developed oil complex exists on state lands on the eastern banks of the river.

The bureau has already leased out 965,000 acres of the petroleum reserve lands. Stan Senner, executive director of Audubon Alaska, applauded the decision not to drill north of Teshekpuk, near Beaufort Sea, saying that it “acknowledges the international importance of the Teshekpuk wetlands, which have been protected by every federal administration since Jimmy Carter.” Ideally, he added, these areas will be permanently protected.

Aside from the prospect of expanding domestic oil supplies, the new production would help alleviate worries about the viability of the Alaska pipeline system. The pipeline is transporting 700,000 barrels of oil daily, down from 2.1 million when the Prudhoe Bay fields were at peak production in 1988. If the amount of oil in the pipeline falls too low in the bitter Arctic climate, it is no longer able to flow south to the tankers that take it to California for processing.

(Por FELICITY BARRINGER, NYT, 17/07/2008)