By Kim Murphy

Los Angeles Times

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The U.S. Senate last week rejected oil drilling on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but the Bush administration quietly is preparing to open 9.6 million acres of pristine coastal lands on the other side of Alaska’s North Slope for oil and gas leasing in 2004.

Unlike ANWR, the lands within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, west of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, do not require further Congressional approval for oil drilling.

U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton has ordered federal land managers to move quickly to expand leasing within the reserve, where the oil industry found potentially significant deposits during an initial lease sale on 4.6 million acres opened for exploration in 1999.

The amount of oil underlying the reserve won’t be known until May, when the U.S. Geological Survey completes its study, although the quantities are likely much less than what the Arctic refuge holds. A draft environmental impact statement on expanded leasing in the reserve is due to be completed at the end of this year.

The reserve is the summer home to millions of migratory birds, the largest lake in the American Arctic, and 500,000 caribou.

Two of the reserve’s most stunning areas are Teshekpuk Lake and the Colville River bluffs, a major nesting area for peregrine falcon and other raptors.

With 23.5 million acres, the NPRA is the largest tract of undeveloped land in North America. It has not galvanized opponents the way neighboring ANWR has because it is not a designated wildlife refuge, and because its wide sweep of tundra potentially can accommodate both wildlife and oil wells more easily than the narrow ribbon of coast in the Arctic refuge.

"The NPRA doesn’t get the level of attention for developing areas of protection that it should, primarily because a lot of the attention is focused on trying to protect the Arctic refuge," said Deb Moore of the Northern Alaska Environmental Center.

The Clinton administration launched recent exploration within the reserve, signing leases on 1 million acres in the northeastern section nearest the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk oil fields in 1999. At the time, there was speculation that the move could help take development pressure off the Arctic refuge, 100 miles to the east.

But the Bush administration has moved forward on both fronts, citing the nation’s dependence on volatile foreign oil suppliers. As early as June 3, the Bureau of Land Management will reopen the 4.6 million-acre northeast quadrant originally offered for leasing in 1999, confident that recent oil discoveries there will boost interest on about 3 million acres still available.

Oil is not the only resource within the NPRA. The reserve also contains large quantities of hard-rock minerals and the nation’s largest deposit of coal.

In May, in an announcement that sent shock waves through the oil industry because the NPRA before had shown so little promise, Phillips Alaska said it had struck oil in five of six wells drilled over the previous two seasons in the NPRA. How much oil it discovered has not been disclosed, but it could be sizable.