Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska's North Slope (2003) / Chapter Skim
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10. Filling Knowledge Gaps
10. Filling Knowledge Gaps
Pages 150-154
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From page 150... ...
The reasons for these difficulties included confidentiality, particularly for identifying the locations of seismic exploration; a failure to analyze information from agency or industry files; the lack of comparability of data collected by various agencies; and the lack of long-term data sets that could be used to assess or anticipate future accumulating effects. For example, most of the data acquired from water-quality monitoring programs, which are required by discharge permits, are retained by the principal permitting agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, and are not readily available.
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From page 151... ...
It should specifically include plans for decommissioning, abandonment, and restoration and rehabilitation once oil and gas production is no longer viable. Even if changing oil prices, new hydrocarbon discoveries, disintegrating infrastructure, changing political arrangements, and other unforeseen factors were to make such a plan obsolete before it could be implemented, the exercises would provide a shared vision of goals for the North Slope and help to identify areas where knowledge is inadequate, and would thus help to guide research and monitoring.
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From page 152... ...
Research should identify CUMULATIVE EFFECTS OF ALASKA NORTH SLOPE OIL AND GAS the specific lifestyle benefits and threats that North Slope residents attach to oil and gas industrial activity. This research should target how much oil and gas activities, as distinguished from other factors, are associated with increasing sociocultural change.
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From page 153... ...
As development spreads into regions with deeper lakes, such as the Colville delta and the eastern portion of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, there is greater potential to affect fish populations within lakes. Under current Alaska Department of Fish and Game policy, water withdrawals from fish-bearing lakes are limited to 15% of the estimated minimum water volume during winter to retain most of the water for wintering fish.
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From page 154... ...
Experimental oil spills could be politically unacceptable. Distinguishing between changes attributable to specific oil and gas activities and those that are the results of other causes is often difficult because multiple factors typically influence the receptors of interest.
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