Teshekpuk Caribou Herd animals graze in June of 2014 in the northeastern part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. The land around Teshekpuk Lake is considered key habitat for the herd, and a new right-of-way agreement gives Nuiqsut residents the authority to prevent development there. (Photo by Bob Wick/Bureau of Land Management)
As ConocoPhillips builds its huge Willow oil drilling project on the western side of Alaska’s North Slope, federal regulators and residents of the nearest Iñupiat village have struck a deal for a new type of environmental oversight to minimize impact of the development.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced last week that it signed a right-of-way agreement with a partnership comprising the Nuiqsut city government, Nuiqsut’s tribal government and the Kuukpik Corp., the Inupiat village’s for-profit Native corporation.
The three entities, combined to form Nuiqsut Trilateral Inc., have authority over about 1 million acres of land encircling Teshekpuk Lake, the largest lake on the North Slope. The area is key habitat for the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd, among other wildlife populations.
The right-of-way agreement prohibits any new leasing, roads, any surface or subsurface exploration activities or oil-related gravel or sand mining on that parcel of land for the duration of Willow’s operations.
The purpose of the agreement, signed Dec. 17, is to “offset the impacts on the herd from the Willow Project by providing durable and long-term protection for the herd by prohibiting certain activities and facilities within the protected property for the benefit of the herd and the herd’s most important habitat,” according to the document.
Under the terms of the agreement, Nuiqsut Trilateral Inc. has the option to waive any or all of the restrictions.
Willow, which lies in the federally managed National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, is set to become the westernmost producing oil field on Alaska’s North Slope.
Willow is expected to start producing oil in 2029, and output is expected to peak at 180,000 barrels per day. In comparison, total production of North Slope oil, which peaked in 1988 at over 2 million barrels per day, averaged 461,000 barrels a day for the 12 months that ended on June 30, according to the Alaska Department of Revenue.
The new right-of-way agreement does not establish an additional area of protection. The affected 1 million acres holds no active leases and is already part of the designated 3.65 million-acre Teshekpuk Lake Special Area, where development is limited, the BLM said. But it does establish a new type of protection that is led by the community.
Kuukpik said it was the entity that first suggested the right-of-way arrangement. Although the Native corporation opposes establishment of any new additional protected areas in the National Petroleum Reserve, the right-of-way concept puts conservation decisions in the hands of the local people and “is a completely community-led effort that BLM has adopted and supported from the ground up,” Kuukpik President George Sielak said in a letter sent to the BLM on Sept. 16.
Kuukpik has acknowledged that Willow development will “negatively impact” the Teshekpuk herd, and additional protections for the caribou were needed to gain the corporation’s support for the project, the letter said. Because of that, Kuupik proposed the arrangement as “an additive, forward-looking mitigation measure that was carefully designed specifically to offset Willow’s likely impacts to the herd by preventing oil and gas development during the life of the Willow Project in the core areas that were most vital to the herd’s continued survival and success,” the letter said.
The Biden administration approved Willow development in March of 2023, despite objections from environmentalists about potential climate-change impacts from the additional oil development. Nuiqsut’s tribal and city governments, now part of Nuiqsut Trilateral Inc., opposed Willow at the time, citing potential disruption of movement for the Teshekpuk herd and concerns that more industrialization would impede villagers’ traditional subsistence hunting and food-gathering practices. But the Nuiqsut governments have since changed their position on Willow.
While Willow is being built, ConocoPhillips has been developing several smaller production sites on the western side of the North Slope.
The newest is Nuna, which began producing on Dec. 17, a bit ahead of the expected early 2025 startup. It is a satellite in the Kuparuk River Unit, meaning its oil is processed at existing Kuparuk facilities. Nuna has 29 wells and is the 49th drill site to be developed in the Kuparuk unit, ConocoPhillips said.
Other new sites that started producing oil in recent years on the western side of the North Slope are ConocoPhillips’ Fiord West Kuparuk and Narwhal, both in the Colville River Unit on state land bordering the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. They started production in 2023 and 2022 respectively, a ConocoPhillips spokesperson said.