MEDIA ADVISORY: June 27, 2007

(Anchorage, Alaska) – Tomorrow (June 28), Congress will review plans by the Bush Administration to allow offshore oil and gas development in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, home to some of the nation’s most important fisheries. The 5-Year Program for Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing is the focus of a House Natural Resources Committee oversight hearing that will probe the program’s provisions in more detail as a growing number of lawmakers are voicing concern over areas slated for development, with some of the most vocal concern focused on Bristol Bay. Other lease sale areas to be considered at the hearing are in the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic, and Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

The 5-Year OCS Program of the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) determines the federal waters around the nation that will be offered for lease sale during 2007-2012.  Included is a Bristol Bay lease sale for 2011 in a 5.6 million acre area off the Alaska Peninsula. Until recently, Bristol Bay had been protected by both congressional and executive actions that barred offshore oil and gas development here.

“By all accounts, Bristol Bay is one of the nation’s crown ocean jewels – it is incumbent on Congress to act now to restore protection of Bristol Bay waters before it’s too late,” said Eric Siy, Executive Director of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council (AMCC). “Oil and gas development in this sensitive area poses unacceptable risks to renewable, marine resources and the coastal economies and subsistence traditions that depend on them,” said Siy.

“We are at ground zero for an oil spill,” explained Terry Hoefferle, an AMCC board member and longtime resident of Dillingham, a community northeast of the proposed lease sale area. The federal government itself predicts that a large oil spill will occur if oil and gas development is allowed.

Bristol Bay, a large estuary of the Bering Sea, is one of the most productive continental shelf areas in the world. The region is home to the world’s largest run of sockeye salmon and the greatest concentration of seabird colonies in North America. Numerous marine mammal species have critical habitat within the area targeted for drilling, including the extremely imperiled eastern stock of the North Pacific right whale. Seismic exploration, oil spills, contaminated discharges, infrastructure construction and increased vessel traffic could harm the region’s marine life, including commercial fisheries valued at more than $2 billion dollars a year. An estimated 40% of total domestic fish catch comes from the area targeted for drilling.

President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in January 2007 effectively ending a long history of bipartisan protection dating back to 1989. Mounting concerns over the prospect of allowing offshore drilling in Bristol Bay prompted a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers to introduce the “Bristol Bay Protection Act” (HR 1957 and S 1311), legislation that would permanently prohibit oil and gas leasing in the region. Earlier this month, the House Appropriations Committee included specific report language in a markup of the Department of Interior Appropriations bill directing MMS to conduct extensive studies on the potential impacts of drilling in Bristol Bay.

“Considering the positive steps now being taken by Members to restore protection, we are counting on the Congress to do what is necessary to ensure that Bristol Bay not be put at grave risk of irreparable harm,” said Eric Siy. “With dramatic loss of sea ice and warming water temperatures, this highly sensitive region is already suffering from the intensifying impacts of global climate change. In addition to placing a permanent ban on offshore oil and gas development in Bristol Bay, lawmakers must act to curb fossil fuel development and use in general to secure the fate of this threatened resource,” Siy concluded.

Congress has only a few more days to review the program before it becomes official policy on July 1, 2007.

WHAT: House Natural Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources oversight hearing on “The Minerals Management Service’s Proposed 2007–2012 Program for Oil and Gas Leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf”

WHEN: Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 10:00 am (EST)

WHERE: Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building.

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