Word: beauforts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...wells they have sunk, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, account for 14% of the nation's current domestic oil production and 23% of its gas. The next place they hope to develop as a major energy source is a tough one: the floor of the ice-jammed Beaufort Sea, about 275 miles above the Arctic Circle, off Alaska's nearly barren north coast...
Estimates of how much oil could be tapped off Alaska's entire outer continental shelf (OCS), including the Beaufort Sea, range up to 25 billion bbl., or nearly three times the reserves in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay field. Some oilmen believe that with a big development effort, Alaska's OCS could eventually produce 4 million bbl. a day, or enough to replace half of the nation's present oil imports. The Canadians, who have been drilling in their sector of the Beaufort Sea for two years, are very bullish on it: this fall Dome Petroleum...
Last week briefcase-toting oilmen gathered at a Fairbanks hotel to bid for drilling rights in the first small part of the U.S.'s Beaufort Sea sector to be opened to exploration. Offers by the companies totaled $2 billion for some 500,000 acres of tracts, but when the leases will be awarded is uncertain. Just four days before, a federal judge had ruled that the lease sale could not be completed until the courts resolved an environmental suit brought by the National Wildlife Federation and other groups calling for a ban on Beaufort Sea drilling...
Despite these precautions, lawsuits could hold up the start of Beaufort Sea development for some time. Oral arguments in the federal suit brought by the National Wildlife Federation will be heard in a Washington, D.C., court on Jan. 3, and there is no telling exactly when or how the case will be resolved. Meanwhile, another suit to halt exploration has been brought by several local parties, including the Alaskan town of Kaktovik, a coastal hamlet populated by 175 Eskimos. Since bowhead meat is a staple of the villagers' diet, their lawyers argue, the Eskimos could be afflicted with "serious...
...Meanwhile, Exxon's Imperial Oil plans to spend more than $5 billion to produce oil from heavy crude. These projects may be stretched out if some recent finds of conventional petroleum elsewhere prove more financially attractive. Some oilmen believe that two offshore strikes, in the Arctic's Beaufort Sea and along the Newfoundland coast, could prove to be of Middle East proportions...