Permitting for Oil and Gas Activities in the OCS Mukluk Island—Beaufort Sea, Alaska 1983

In Alaska so little land is in private ownership that the primary means for the oil industry to obtain rights for exploration and development is through State or Federal petroleum lease sales. In 1965-67 the State offered lease sales that launched the beginning of a new era in Alaska's history. Over the years that followed, extensive exploratory and delineation drilled had defined an oil reservoir - the Prudhoe Bay Field - lying above the Arctic Circle under 250 square miles of arctic tundra. This new field was so huge that only thirteen nations on earth had total reserves that exceeded it in volume. The first petroleum lease sale in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) was a joint Federal/State offering in 1979. Many groups opposed the sale on the grounds of unproven technology for oilspill cleanup.