Anchorage Daily News

The draft environmental impact statement for a proposed exchange of land between Doyon Ltd. and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Yukon Flats region of interior Alaska is out for public review. And, judging by the past controversy surrounding the proposed deal, comments should come a plenty.

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"There are a lot of people with strong opinions on the issue," said Fish and Wildlife spokesman Bruce Woods.

A deep sedimentary basin with petroleum potential underlies the Yukon Flats, a roughly 15,000-square-mile lowland area around the Yukon River between the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and the Canadian border. Doyon Ltd., the Native regional corporation for Interior Alaska, has long been interested in developing oil and gas in that basin.

Following passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971 that created Alaska's Native corporations, Doyon made an especially large selection of land in the Yukon Flats, with the possibility of future oil and gas development in mind, said James Mery, Doyon's senior vice president, lands and natural resources. Doyon owns about 1 million acres with oil and gas potential inside the area.

Congress created the 8.6 million-acre Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge around the Doyon land in 1980.

Following an assessment of the area's oil and gas potential by Exxon and Texaco in the 1970s and 1980s, Doyon decided to try to exchange some of its land within the refuge for refuge land over the most prospective part of the Yukon Flats basin. Negotiations between Doyon and Fish and Wildlife resulted in a 2005 agreement in principle for a land swap.

Under the terms, Doyon would acquire about 110,000 acres of surface and subsurface land, and an additional 97,000 acres of subsurface oil and gas rights. The refuge would acquire a minimum of 150,000 acres of Doyon land. Doyon would also reallocate about 56,000 acres of remaining land entitlement within the refuge to locations outside the refuge.

Fish and Wildlife would also have the right to some revenue from Doyon oil and gas production, to buy other Doyon land within the refuge boundary.

OIL AND GAS ESTIMATES

In 2004 the U.S. Geological Survey assessed the Yukon Flats basin and concluded that there might be 173 million barrels of oil and 5.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the basin. A more recent assessment for Doyon by Petrotechnical Resources of Alaska has upped the ante by suggesting that the basin may hold from 300 million barrels to almost 1 billion barrels of oil, and perhaps 15 trillion cubic feet of conventional natural gas.

By comparison, the Cook Inlet region has produced 1.3 billion barrels of oil and 7.3 trillion cubic feet of gas total since 1958.

There has been vociferous opposition to the land swap proposal.

"The Gwich'in people of the Yukon Flats have been dependent on the resources provided by this land for thousands of years," said Dacho Alexander, first chief of the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich'in tribe in Fort Yukon, in a press release. "We are acutely aware that even a minor spill could have devastating effects on the fragile ecosystem, not only here in the Yukon Flats, but along the entire Yukon watershed."

"Oil and gas development are not compatible with the purposes for which the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge was established," said Nicole Whittington-Evans, director of the Wilderness Society's Alaska Refuge Program. "The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service itself has acknowledged this in the past. Development poses a threat to water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, subsistence cultures, and the wilderness and recreational values of the refuge and its adjacent public lands."

The draft EIS acknowledges that any oil and gas development in the Yukon Flats would result in some alteration of wildlife habitats and other environmental impacts.

But the draft also says "there would be a net gain (to the refuge) of water bodies and fish habitat, high value waterfowl habitat, wildlife habitat, aquatic mammal species, known cultural resource sites, and lands for subsistence use."

Fish and Wildlife would end up administering more land, with some consolidated surface ownership and reduced refuge boundaries, the draft says.

ACCESS TO DOYON LAND

Mery pointed out that Doyon will likely proceed with oil and gas development on its existing land, even if the land swap does not happen. Then Doyon would have the right to cross refuge land, including the lands that the corporation would have gained in the land swap, to develop its oil interests.

So, Mery sees the land swap as a gain to Fish and Wildlife, regardless of whether oil or gas is ever found in the Yukon Flats basin.

And to address subsistence concerns Doyon funded a $230,000 Fish and Wildlife-designed study into the subsistence use of land within the refuge for the EIS, Mery said.

"One of the things that was clear to us at Doyon was that there was not any good recent data on subsistence uses in the Yukon Flats," Mery said.

That survey has shown that there is little subsistence activity in the prime area of potential oil and gas development in the south-central part of the area, Mery said. Doyon land involved in the swap also sees little subsistence use.

Moreover, land transferred to Fish and Wildlife would remain available for subsistence hunting, with a priority for rural hunters, Mery said.

Doyon supported the EIS development, even though there was no legal requirement to do the impact statement, Mery said.

"We listened to a lot of our shareholders (supporters, opposition and those on the fence) who a couple of years ago thought that the process was moving too quickly and that more study was needed," Mery said.

Comment deadline

Public comments are due by March 25 about the proposed Yukon Flats land trade. The draft environmental impact statement can be found at yukonflatseis.ensr.com/yukon_flats/default.html..

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