US: more Alaska acreage to be opened up

THE US government is pushing for more of the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska (NPRA) to be made available for oil and gas exploration, following an amendment issued by the state's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to a 1998 development plan for the northeast region of the reserve. Originally, 87% of the NPRA's 4.6m acres in the region along the North Slope were to be made available to oil and gas development leases, but the new plan would increase this to about 96%, with nearly 400,000 new acres becoming available to exploration firms. The 1998 resource-management plan, authored by the administration of Bill Clinton, provides for potential recovery of 0.6bn barrels of oil, around 60,000 barre