Opening up for new oil discovery
Permafrost melt is a good thing forming a grid-like pattern exposing both Pikka and Horseshoe oil discoveries near the Colville River delta. They may hold more than 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Recently the USGS decision to reassess the NPR-A was announced in 2015 and 2017. It suggests that the two discoveries 21 miles apart likely are in the same oil pool. Even those older rocks in NPR-A have been estimated to hold 86 million barrels of oil and nearly 15 trillion cubic feet of gas. This reminds us that the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska ('NPR-A') is a 22.8 million acre region managed by the Bureau of Land Management on Alaska's North Slope.
So, the adjacent history of Prudue Bay is the largest oil field in both the United States and in North America, covering 213,543 acres on Alaska's North Slope discovered in 1968. The area was originally part of the 100 million acres the federal government allotted to the new state of Alaska as a form of economic support. It's Northstar oil pool, is located approximately 12,500 feet (3,800 m) below the seabed. To be blunt, NPR-A has an unproven upper reserve similar to Purdue Bay and a re-assessing to new lease rights is under way.
To drill this region there is an established Trans-Alaska pipeline system covering over 800 miles (1,300 km), 12 pump stations, and a new tanker port that has had minimal environmental impact due to conservation efforts. Evidently drilling off the coasts of Florida and California is not a good thing for a condo view but leasing of natural gas and oil production in Alaska makes sense to that state. Oil is not going away, and with environmental over site from source remains best business practices and ethics. Why? The government can always break a lease under its contract terms with damages using Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration [PHMSA] at raising the threat to nature in all its elements.
In 2001, the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) owners produced a comprehensive analysis of the impacts associated with the renewal of the TAPS rights-of-way. The resulting report, described the physical, biological, and socio-economic impacts of right-of-way renewal — and of non-renewal knowing new surface-disturbance areas associated with TAPS will be small and isolated. The pipeline was built to withstand earthquakes, forest fires, and other natural disasters. The 2002 Denali earthquake (7.9 Mw) damaged some of the pipeline sliders designed to absorb similar quakes and it caused the pipeline to shut down for more than 66 hours as a precaution.