OBAMA….28% of Alaska Reserve’s Recoverable Oil Declared Off-Limits

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Outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has signed a directive placing 28 percent of the “estimated economically recoverable oil” in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve off-limits to oil exploration.

The Record of Decision signed by Salazar marks the first time a plan has been put into effect to regulate all of the Reserve.

The action “allows the development of 72 percent of the estimated economically recoverable oil in the nearly 23-million-acre Reserve, while protecting the vital subsistence resources of Alaska Natives and the habitat of world-class wildlife populations,” the Interior Department said in a statement.

The plan protects “critical areas for sensitive bird populations” and for “the roughly 400,000 caribou” in parts of the Reserve, the statement asserts.

The statement does not disclose that 28 percent of the Reserve is now closed to development. Simple math does.

The Reserve was set aside by President Warren Harding in 1923 as an emergency oil supply for the U.S. Navy. It was transferred to the Department of the Interior in 1976 and is now known as the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Republicans were quick to criticize Salazar’s move.

Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement: “Only in President Obama’s backwards worldview of anti-energy policies does it make sense to prohibit energy production in a place specifically set aside for energy production at a time when gasoline prices are skyrocketing.”

The village of Nuiqsut, a mostly Alaska Native community in the Reserve, had requested that more land south of nearby Teshekpuk Lake be made available for drilling leases, but the request was ignored by the Interior Department, CNS News reported.

Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska said: “No one disputes the importance of Teshekpuk Lake to waterfowl and caribou, but I think we should listen most closely to those who live there and depend on these critical subsistence resources as well as the economic opportunity resource development can bring.”

Salazar, who oversaw a moratorium on offshore drilling after the BP oil spill and promoted alternative energy sources throughout the nation, is stepping down this month.