FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 29, 2007

(Anchorage, Alaska) – Today, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne approved the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS) 5-Year Program for Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing. The 5-Year Program which will become effective on July 1, 2007 determines the federal waters around the nation that will be offered for lease sale during 2007-2012. Included in the program is a lease sale in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a large estuary of the Bering Sea which supports some of the nation’s most important commercial fisheries and the largest sockeye salmon run in the world.

 The Alaska Marine Conservation Council (AMCC), a community-based organization whose members include families who rely on Bristol Bay’s renewable marine resources, asserts that drilling in the sensitive waters of Bristol Bay and the eastern Bering Sea poses unacceptable risks to the region’s fisheries and other marine life. 

“It is, indeed, a sad day for Bristol Bay,” said Eric Siy, AMCC’s executive director. “Repeated calls from an extraordinarily diverse constituency including Native villages, commercial fishermen, conservationists, and more united in their opposition to offshore oil and gas development in Bristol Bay, have fallen on deaf ears,” Siy said.   

Bristol Bay supports commercial fisheries valued at more than $2 billion dollars a year. The Bristol Bay lease sale planned for 2011 in a 5.6 million acre area off the Alaska Peninsula overlaps important habitat and fishing grounds for red king crab, halibut, pollock, cod and salmon. An estimated 40% of total domestic fish catch comes from the region.

The lease sale area also overlaps designated critical habitat for the highly endangered North Pacific right whale and is home to the greatest concentration of seabird colonies in North America. Seismic exploration, oil spills, contaminated discharges, infrastructure construction and increased vessel traffic pose grave risk to the region’s fish, marine mammals, seabirds and waterfowl.

Until this year, Bristol Bay had been protected by both congressional and executive actions barring offshore oil and gas development. Growing concern over allowing drilling in one of the most productive continental shelf areas in the world prompted a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers to introduce the “Bristol Bay Protection Act,” legislation that would permanently prohibit oil and gas leasing in the region. In June, 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.

“It is now incumbent on the Congress to restore protection to this national treasure before it is too late,” explained Siy. “The federal government’s own studies predict at least one major oil spill will occur if development goes forward here. Knowing this makes today’s action appear all the more irresponsible,” Siy concluded.  

In addition to Bristol Bay, lease sales are planned for areas in the Gulf of Mexico, Mid-Atlantic and Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

Learn more about the resources at risk in Bristol Bay. 

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