alaska's delegation senator lisa measure cows ki is the chair of the hearing. >> welcome back, everyone. sorry for the extra ten-minute delay but we have finished at least these tranche of voting and hopefully we'll have an opportunity to get through this last panel with an opportunity for questions and conclude the hearing before we have another round of votes. so that's the hope here. this second panel is perhaps more of our technical panel. we have several witnesses present to help answer questions about modern development on the north slope and what it might look like in the future. joining us today are mr. aaron shut. aaron is the president and ceo of doyon limited. thank you for being here. you also brought your son with you, which is a great educational opportunity for him and we appreciate you both being here. low w lois epistone is -- epstein is with us. she has been before the committee before. following ms. epstein, we will have mr. richard glenn, also a frequent flyer here to the -- to the energy committee. he is the executive vice president for land and natural resources with the arctic slope regional corporation and it's good to have you back, richard. pat is known to many alaskans and many here in washington, d.c. he's the former special assistant for alaska affairs at department of the interior during the previous administration. so welcome back, pat. and last on our panel is matthew cronan, he is a biologist, a former research professor at the university of alaska fairbanks and some of us know him as the caribou man, but certainly one is that is well-versed in the biology of many of these issues that we have been discussing. so thank you all for traveling the distance to be here today. thank you not only for your contributions before the hearing, but also for the good work that you do in your respective areas. aaron, if you would like to lead the panel off with your comments, again, try to stick to five minutes if your can. your full statement will be incorporated as part of the record and then we'll have an opportunity for questions. so welcome. >> thank you, madam chairwoman, members of the committee. it's a very great opportunity to be here to testify today. i am the president and chief executive officer of doyon limited. i am a tribal member and a doyon shareholder. doyon is one of the 13 native corporations -- in the southern portion of the national wildlife refuge lies within our region. doyon supports the opening of the anwar coastal plain to oil and gas development if it can be shown to be consistent with the protection of the porcupine caribou herd. gwichs'in people rely on that herd for survival. we encourage the united states government to offer the qwich'in a chance to be heard whether or not it opens anwar up to oil and gas development. that operates in the oil and gas industry, it's doyon drilling. with eight of the most unique and advanced rigs in the industry and they're designed especially for the arctic. and doyon drilling has led the industry in innovation over its 40 years of existence. we're proud of that leadership role as it fits with our corporate value with a commitment to employee safety and sound environmental practices. when congress last debated open anwar in 2005, supporters many made arguments about the use of technology and how it would minimize the impact on anwar, and since then a lot of these claims have borne out in the industry and we're going to share some of them today. a couple of them are directional, extended reach multilateral drilling techniques that have been developed and perfected in that timeframe. that allows wells to be drilled in all directions from a well pad kind of like spokes on a bicycle wheel. directional drilling has been around since the 1970s, but at that time it was -- did not allow the reach that we can now. so you could drill a couple of square miles around a pad. i've got a figure here that's been shown before in the hearing today. you can see a couple of three square miles using technology front 1970s and fast-forward to the one on the far-right, a 12-acre pad where a drill rig can reach out and cover 125 square miles. that means that you can space pads and modern development up to 10 miles apart and that there is little to no surface impact between those pads. that's a fairly dramatic shift in technology in that time period. i'd like to say the impact of those tech lodgeal changes anol not theoretical. we've got another graph. doyon well 142, that's five production wells drilled from a single surface well bore. each of those pentlateral wells -- the total length is over 39,000 feet. 28,000 feet of that i understand is in the production zone. if doyon's client has developed these same resources 20 years ago, it likely would have required probably three drill pads and multiple wells on each of those pads to access the resources we are able to access from a single surface location. doyon is currently building an extended reach drilling rig, also referenced earlier in the hearing, rig 26, that will be able to reach out even further. the 35,000 horizontal feet that was mentioned by several people earlier today and that's the capability that allows to reach tout for the full 125 square miles from a single surface well pad. for perspective of those here in the room, rig 26 will be able to drill from here on capitol hill and hit a target the size of certainly this room at the national harbor resort and convention center on potomac river six miles away. rig 26 is being developed to allow our client to develop known but currently untapped oil resources from existing surface infrastructure. in other words, our client won't have to build new pads, roads or pipelines on the surface to produce known oil reserves. the changes in the technology have allowed smaller well pads on the slope, north slope, and they are up to 70% smaller and 70% to 80% fewer pads since prudhoe bay was developed in the 1970s. what that looks like is a 19,000-acre footprint goes down to just a few hundred acres to develop the alpine field on the western side. finally, this has also been referenced -- i've got to upside down there. the impact of exploration on the environment is very minimal. the difference between exploration and production, you can see here a location in the mpra with our rig 141 and then we've got the summer version of the same lotion, senator sullivan mentioned this before, also upside down, where there is almost no lasting surface impact from exploration. so i wanted to close my testimony here by saying how important oil and gas is to the economy of the state and to our company. we obviously have a large presence in the alaska oil and gas economy. it was developed because it was the available economy to us as a corporation in the 1970s with the development of prudhoe bay and we're very proud that we employ thousands of our native alaska shareholders and we do it in an environmentally safe and protection of our employees is paramount, but to provide income to our workers, a single drill could have an impact of $4 million for our shareholders on those rigs. those numbers are not theoretical either. that's the reality we've ah had for many years times the number of rigs we have working. so in short, madam chairwoman, we're very proud to be here today, we're supportive in opening anwar, but only if we can assure ourselves of the protection of the porcupine caribou herd as i mentioned earlier in my testimony. >> thank you very much. i appreciate the visuals as well. let's next go to ms. epstein. welcome. >> thank you very much, chairman murkowski and also those she's not here to ranking member cantwell, senator king and other members of the committee for inviting me to testify at this important hearing on a critical national public lands issue. my name is lois epstein and i am the arctic program director for the wilderness society and my home is in anchorage. our organization scientists began working in this region in the arctic in the 1930s and as an alaska licensed engineer, i am proud to be part of legacy. the arctic national wildlife refuge say vast willeder innocence landscape of tundra plains, dramatic peaks and coastala luns. there is no other place like it in america. for thousands of years, the area has been home to different animals and sustains them. it provides habitat for more than 45 spees seefs animals including one of the largest cara bu herds, wolves, smooep, and over whun 60 species of birds who my great from the refuge to breed there from all 50 states. the arctic refuge is the crown jufl our nation's wildlife refuge sx. the 1.5 million acre coastal plain is recognizinged as the biological heart of the refuge. coastal plain is as important to our nation's heritage as yellow stone and the grand canyon where we don't choose to drill. now, cron trast this pristine wild place with oil and gas production which is compensate and messy and a lot has mott changed over the years to make it less so. even the most well financed operators have blowouts and spills. just this year bp 'a production well blowout due falling perma froflt and specialists had to fly in to prevent a safety disaster. this week, the state is looking at all wells with similar designs because they are concerned for the potential for additional blowouts. in 2012, rep saw had an exploratory well blowout on the north slope that spewed roughly 42,000 gallons of drilling muds. it took a month to plug that well because frigid temperatures prevented work on many days. according to the state's spill database, there have been 121 crude oil spills during the past five years or approximately two per month. a 2010 state study showed almost five spills each year object north slope over 1,000 gallons. i think it's important to recognize they're not all small spills. oil development infrastructure would sprawl over vast parts of the coastal plain and not be confined 2,000 acres as some have said. the 2,000 eric calculation does not include roads, gravel mines or pipelines except for the limited places where the support posts touch the ground. there also would be year round air pollution and noise from generator, trucks, aircraft and processing facilities, long distance pipelines and gravel roads that could der ter some cara bu from crossing and it cost them energy and wastes from drilling operations and living quarters that, i disposal. directional or extended reach drilling which is not a new technology will have the same impacts. directional drilling reduces only one concern and that's pad size. roads and air strips ever still needed, pipelines are still required and pollution and industrial noise and toxic spills are stinl ef vit able. because of higher costs due to longer wells, directional drilling may or may not be used used by industry for exploratory drilling. as discussed at the may 10th, 2011, hearing in this committee, oil companies prefer not to use directional drilling for exploratory wells because doing so provides less technical information about subsurface conditions. directional drilling rhetoric is in some respects a trojan horse for access to the entire coastal plain for oil production. nikker the 2,000 acre provision norris directional drilling would prevent entire coastal plain from becoming industrialized. an arctic refuge drilling is not she'd. the flow is up 6% during the past three years and the alaska department of natural resources expects the pipeline's throughput to continue increase through the late 2020s. i have a figure two in my testimony shows that. significant new discovers not on federally protected lands including in the national petroleum reserve will increase production and this new technology that we've heard about is also very useful in existing oil fields to increase production. notably drilling in the arctic refuge is not necessary to ensure that the transalaska oil pipeline remains viable for decades. the most recent report on leasing was issued with limited documentation of february, 2012. report estimates 5 billion in bonus bids for coastal plan leases between the state and federal governments. crude oil prices were approximately twice as high in 2012 as they are now making arctic refuge drilling significantly less attractive today and for the foreseeable future. it is highly unlikely revenue and bonus bids on arctic refuge coastal plains will come close to estimates. since 2000, the average north slope onshore bid as been $34 an acre. in summary, inclusion of the arctic refuge in the budget is less about meeting revenue targets and more about approving a controversial problematic oil development without the possibility of a filibuster. it would be a black mark for alaska and that congress with future generations to industrial lies and essentially destroy such a unique place. thank you for this opportunity to discuss this unique and important region. i'm happy to answer your questions. >> thank you, ms. epstein. mr. glenn, welcome. >> thank you, madam chairman, committee members. i'm happy to see that the other half of the arctic coalition of america is here so thank you for staying for the hearing. senator king. my name's richard glenn, i'm the vice president of lands for arctic slope regional corporation. it's an alaskan native corporation created by congress in 1971. it's head quartered on the north slope and it includes villages that extend from the west to the east in the arctic region of alaska from point hope, point lay, wainwright, poc testify to vic and the pas. village residents there have depended on resources from the land, rivers, and the ocean. i'm a tribal member. mr. who shot is a trooibl member. the man who spoke before me say tribal member, our lieutenant-governor is a trooibl member and i was particularly stunned by the ranking member's comments that said she didn't see tribal members. and mooib maybe she just didn't find enough tribal members that agreed with her position. i hope that you hear from all of the tribal members of the state of alaska. the majority of whom support safe, responsible, exploration and development in anwr. and i'm also not here to debate the sacredness of the land on either side of the brooks range, the north or the south. for us, all the lands are sacred. they contain the bones of our ancestors and i'm not talking about ancient people, i'm talking about people in living memory. we didn't start brurg our dead until around the 1920s or so my great grandparents were the first generation of folks who were buried right after the flu epidemics swept through the region. before those days, the tradition was to leave the residents however temporary it was when a person died. so ancient sod houses up until the early 19 hundreds carry the bones of our people. and some of my ancestors bones are in prud doe bay. others are scattered along the coastal plain. our people are named after the places. the places are named after the people. and some of it is state land, some of it is federal land, some of it is native owned land, but it's all equally sacred. but we depend on that land for development and food. and i don't wish to trivialize anyone's dependence because ours is equally as important. we own a piece of this heritage, 92,000 arks of land on the coastal plain of anwr along with matthew rex ford's village corporation. these lands hold resource potential for oil and gas development. i'm a geologist by training. i help drill and develop natural resources on the north slope. i know the practices related to drilling and i've seen the evolution over the past 50 years and 30 or so years of my own professional life from really simple drilling, cementing and production to the or nate and efficient diagrams that you've seen here on the postters that were present sod effectively. the reduced footprint is real. hundreds of square miles drained by tens of acres of development. senator king asked how many wells are we talking about? how much surface impact? we have real world answers to those questions. they're here at the table, they're here in the audience. in the west end of today's exploration west on the covel river delta and just to the west where the native folks from another village 100 miles also own some resource potential, 500 wells have been drilled down to depths around 8,000 or 9,000 feet and radiating outward as far as five or six hundred miles. on these 500 wells, production wells, injector wells. they're done from four basic central facilities for drilling covered u covering maybe 300 acres of land. so now we're talk real world examples, real world numbers of wells for at its peak hundreds of thousands of barrels per day in production. that's the kind of development that we envision moving into the coastal plain of anwr. this is a cartoon. this diagram shows dramatic exaggerations. if you'd follow the scale of this map, the dots themselves are two miles across each. the we will symbols themselves are three miles high. the pipelines, if they're shown as they're shown on this map, that's pipeline that would be a quarter mile wide. this is not realistic. if you want to see realistic development, look at realistic numbers, go to the areas of modern exploration and development. and, yet, one thing we learn in production is production declines. starts at a peak and begins a decline and the lion in the room is prud doe bay. they were super giant oil fields and we're on the shoulders of their decline. and the new discovers, as significant as they are and as thank will as i am that they've been discovered, they can't match the slope of the decline. they only change it's slope, still a decline. meanwhile, 92,000 acres and the million or so acres of the coastal plain of anwr area set aside just for its energy potential lies fallow. and we can't even test their potential unless congress acts. we think that the alaska native landowners of sock testify to vic and the folks from the arctic slope region cannot realize their right tokic self e self-determination if congress fails to lift the development on the coastal plain. so congress needs to act. my organization was an agreement made between congress and the tribes of alaska. we didn't ask for it, in fact we fought against it. but we're living with the results and so in our region we have a braided relationship of municipalities, tribes, and corporations. we're oall welded together, braided together like a rope so you can't separate tribe from corporation and you can't separate our mother's languages from the language of discourse we're using here today. i could speak in the language of my mother and it would be gibberish to you and frankly disrespectful to everybody. the only indigenous people that should be listened to the loudest are the folks from poc testify to vic and today's hearing shows there's a lack of attention paid to them. listen to what they're saying. they need an economy, they need development in their area montana. they want to have the freedom what everyone takes for granted, reliable power, water, schools, and the ability to use sanitation that keeps their kids healthy. i strongly recommend that the committee look at the testimony of the folks from the village. if you look at the tribal folks from throughout alaska we don't agree 100%, but the majority do agree. we believe that wildlife and development can coexist. they already do today, in fact, we're clarg caribou they're having in the current development around the bay and the river, this is the central arctic caribou herd, the alaskan fishing game, wildlife biologists are collaring caribou, they're calving in the area of infrastructure, and then migrating south to arctic village to be hunted by our gwich'in neighbors to the south. so we already are hunting caribou who are calving in areas of development. i've had the honor of taking some of you on tours. we see caribou there underneath pipelines. sometimes underneath facilities like man camps and hotels and when they're trying to get away from summer mosquitoes caribou will go anywhere. they'll be lying down right on the tundra next to the us buses that are taking things through the area 'the caribou aren't afraid. >> we're going to have to ask you to wrap up. >> they're not afraid because they're not being hunted. they're not being hunted there. so the wildlife and infrastructure can coexist. we speak in favor of a safe and expeditious opening at the 1002 area. it would be good for our region, our state, and our country. thank you. >> thank you. and hopefully we'll have an opportunity to ask more so that you can continue. pat, mr. pa cho, welcome. >> chairman mir kows sky, members of the committee, thank you for the privilege to testify today on the arctic national wildlife ren refuge. i'm testifying as a retired public serve and the and private citizen. my past lives over 45 years in alaska have included serving in the alaska state legislature as commissioner of the alaska department of natural resorts, worked for the alaska federation natives in otto bon alaska and most recently special assistant to the secretary of interior for alaska affairs pits would confess from the onset that i have worked for politicians and organizations that have favored drilling in the arctic refuge and for those that have opposed exploration and development. since my participation is a congressional staffer in the passage of the alaska national interest lands conservation act 40 years ago, i have witnessed the daik decades of debate on the issue of per migt oil and gas leasing and development in the refuge. as an alaskan, i appreciate the economic benefits that might accrue from oil development in the refuge, but i've come to the conclusion that the last piece of america's arctic is more appropriately left as wilderness as a far more valuable legacy of future generations. i've had the opportunity to hike the mountains and float wild rivers in the refer fujita to observe herds of caribou on the coastal plain, witness dozens of polar bear, and fly over thousands of snow geese gathering on the coastal plain of the refuge. there can be no denying that the arctic refuge is one of the most special and spectacular places on the planet. america's arctic coastal plain stretches over 600 miles from the canadian border west ward. most of the this area is available for oil and gas development. in the central arctic oil development on state land surrounding the bay sprauls for over 100 miles along the sea coast. further west lesion and development are proceeding in the 23 acre national petroleum reserve alaska. and now it is proposed to explore and develop the last remaining part of the coastal plain, our national haters age. some argue that the acres coastal plain represents only a small fraction of the refuge and development would not significantly impact the overall refuge. but the narrow coastal plain is the biological and echo logical heart of the refuge. the coastal plain is an integral component of the ecosystem and provides key habitat for caribou, water foul, and damning sites for polar bear. the resources called for in section 1002 in i will ka issued in 1987 found that 1002 area is the most biologically productive part in the refuge for wildlife and is the center of wildlife activity, unquote. and why are we proposing to develop the last remaining part of the arctic coastal plain? are we at war and need more oil for our naition's security? have we run out of oil gas and gasoline for our homes and cars? do we think that lesion revenues will significantly help our federal and state budgets? the answer is clearly no to all these questions and the answer should be no to the question of allowing oil and gas vop development in the refuge. ways greatly moved by the documentary the national parks, america's best idea. in the late 1950s, a dedicated group of fairbanks residents including the fairbanks garden club had a best idea to protect wild public land spanning the books range in the northeast corner of alaska. in 1960, the 9 million acre arctic wildlife range was created under a land owner secretary of interior seton for the purpose, quote, preserving unique wild live, wilderness and recreational values. this great idea was renewed in 1980 with a passage of ilka in which the range was expandnded and remaimed the arctic while life refuge. it's purposes were laid out in statute, quote, to conserve fish and wildlife habitations in their natural diversity. ken burns's documentary vividly demonstrates how the heroes of our nation's history are those who had the foresight to protect and defend america's cultural and national treasures for the benefit and enjoyment of future generations. those folks of fairbanks helped protect something of preeminent value to the nation a generation ago for those of us today. conversely, history in our children will not honor those that would deface one of america's most treasured landscapes, the arctic refuge should be the very last place we allow oil development. thank you. >> thank you, pat. dr. cronin, welcome to the committee. >> thank you, center myrrh kows can sky, king and committee for allowing me to testify. i'm matt cronin and i'm a book biologist and today i'll speak mostly about caribou, oil fields, and the science. the science is large, the literature and the science is very large and i'll provide a brief summary here orally and in my written testimony there's many citations, scientific papers. this summer i was lucky enough to watch senator king at the symposium on the impacts of an ice diminishing arctic. >> i watched it online. senator murkowski gave comments at this symposium. he said, we can't make good policy without good data. and then he said, give us the science in a way we can understand it and absorb and that nothing could be more important. so i understand that as nonscientists you need science toufts tell you things in a way you can understand. there's two problems. one is the science, the literature is very large and the other is separating the actual data and science from interpretation. and that's our job as scientists is to clearly differentiate those. i feel it's my duty to inform all of congress and all the american people of the science and then policy will come from that. science doesn't make policy, it informs policy. and that was the major point of senator king's comments at that symposium that i really appreciated. with regard to caribou in the oil fields, as many references in my written testimony and within the references many references, i'll hit on a few key points. first, there is impacts to individuals and then there's impacts to populations. an important concept with regard to the north slope caribou herds, herds are not the same as populations as we typically speak about them in biology. herds are defined by cabbing areas. the population all four north slope herds to some extent are the same population. there's immigration between them, there's overlap on winter ranges. so the herds censuses are good in terms of quantifying the numbers of animals cabbing in the area, but the population is much more dynamic and affected by many factors. the studies have shown some level of displacement of cabbing cows from roads, but it's not unequivocal. in the case of those studies, 44% of the calves observed were within the first four kilometers of the roads which was the area claimed to be displacement. and then a replicate study showed most of the calves, the higher density was within the first kilometer. the point is the literature is not clear cut. calves don't always avoid oil field infrastructure, the cows having the calves. in the summer the caribou use the oil fields quite extensively as mr. glenn said, they go up on the pads and under pipelines for insect relief. are the caribou herds themselves are quite dynamic. if you look at the charts in my written testimony which are the graphs of the populations, the central arctic, pork cue pine, and western arctic herds you'll see dramatic variation over time. and natural populations in general, and caribou in particular have very large population fluctuations naturally due many things. winter conditions, predation, and immigration and emigration as i mentioned. so the biology is complex and the literature is large. the alaska department of fish and game stated in a newsletter last year the impact of oil infrastructure on the central arctic is also being considered in a recent decline, but is not thought to be continue contribute together decline since the herd grew substantially during peak oil development. several the papers that i coauthored address this point up through the early 2000s and it's important to look at the original literature and the references therein. i believe that the status of caribou in the north slope oil fields has been good. they continue to use the oil field areas as habitat. the herd's grown substantially since the oil fields were developed. as the oil fields were developed, new technologies and insights resulted in a much smaller area of development and mitigation measures such as elevating pipelines, separating pipelines from roads have been implemented that have helped a lot with passage through the oil fields. i think oil and gas development in the 1002 area can be done with limited impacts by using proven mitigation measures. i believe it can be done with minimum impactsing to caribou as long as mitigation measures are implemented. one, of course, because cabbing is a main concern, it's very simple. you simply limit activities during the cabbing period. you limit traffic, you limit aircraft, you limit noise, and you get local knowledge to help you manage in local area. i've also done research on polar bears and other arctic animals that i'd be happy to provide information if anyone's interested. and feel free to ask questions. thank you. >> thank you, dr. cronin. thank you to each of you for your testimony here this afternoon. we'll now have an opportunity for some questions. it was -- it was stated by my ranking member at the outset of the committee that in her review things haven't changed, not much has changed. and i think some of the arguments against an wr, that's true that many of us recall from a long time ago. but what i've heard today say recognition that we really have seen change in the seven years since this committee has last considered the prospect for the 1002 area, the technology as mr. shut has outlined as changed considerably. but i also think that the data, the science, the research that has been collected over the 40 some odd years that we have been operating up north can better inform us. and we mentioned -- you mentioned mitigation, dr. cronin, you mentioned those technologies. and mr. glenn, you speak had the caribou and the fact that the caribou are around the camps, they are on the roads, they are -- they're not deterred by manmade activities. now we recognize that that is not, while they are calving, this is clearly a more sensitive time, but i would like a little more discussion here just in terms of how we are utilizing the science that we have collected to be better stewards of the wildlife, the infrared that is being used to detect polar bears in a den and how we are avoiding contact or disturbance and, again, some of the other mitigation measures. the proposal was made that perhaps there might be some form of comanagement of caribou if -- if we are to move forward with the 1002. i'd like to open up that discussion, if i may. and let's start off with you, richard. >> thank you for the question, senator murkowski. as dr. cronin state the, the issue of timing comes out strongest and the exploration of course of the coastal plain, what happened in the winter which is not a calving season, and so there's already -- >> before you move on, i think it's important for colleagues to understand when we talk about exploration in alaska in the wintertime, it's not because we like to be out in the cold and the dark. >> right. >> it is because we are required do exploration during this period. if you might address that as well. >> the navy began exploring for oil and gas on the north slope in the 1940s and they discovered very quickly that summertime, which is when a lot of exploration happens in warmer climates is not the time to try to move about on the tundra because everything you do that needs heavy equipment gouges itself into the thawed out surface. so they tailored its practices to operate in the winter when the ground is frozen so that even if there was no snow cover and no ice road, for example, the tundra kind of protects itself by being in a frozen state. that's just the general paradigm of exploration the way it exists today. flash forward to today in addition to those hard lessons learned, they've developed ways to explore with seismic and drilling on ice roads and ice pads that further insulate the surface from the harmful effects of summertime disturbance of the tundra. so the calendar already dictates that the machinery's going to be around when the animals are less likely to be there. now, my upbringing is from a central part of the arctic. sometimes caribou are around year round. in fact, those of us who live from fairbanks northward, we're caribou connoisseurs. we know when the marrow changes flavor, we know when the fur is the best. we can tell the difference between pregnant and nonpregnant cows, for example. and calving is a special time. and if you're a caribou hunter, you know that a mother caribou that's already carrying a calf inside her, she wants to lay down and she'll lay downey whereas long as she's not being threatened by something. and it's the -- it's the pregnant caribou that shows the least, i don't know, dr. cronin might know better than me, but i've hunted a lot of caribou and when they run away from you, the pregnant cows are the ones that still stay laying on the ground. for some reason run away and come back. and so the nature of a caribou carrying a calf is different than regular caribou behavior. all of that is this may, june time frame when all the exploration tools should be out of the theater. once development happens, if development happens, the facilities and the pipelines are constructed to minimize their effects. the pipelines are elevated so caribou can walk unempeded underneath the pipelines. and the facilities are concentrated on to small, focused pads. there's a lot of stuff happening on one piece of gravel and the caribou are free to did whatever they need to do do on the undisturbed tundra that surrounds the pads. >> thank you. i'm over my time. senator king. >> thank you. dr. cronin, it's intimidating that you cite my own words. literally scores of people watched that presentation online, i think. so let me go back to some of the questions that i asked before. mr. shot, maybe you can answer this. i think i've discerned the answer, it's not 2000 contiguous acres, is that correct, it's 2,000 acres made up of lots of little pieces? >> it would certainly not be 2,000 contiguous achers. >> so the drilling isn't limited to one 2,000 acre-square in this large area? >> i have to say i've never seen the geology, it's not publicly available to people like me. but the size of oil fields is many thousands of acres or hundreds of thousands of acres if you're talking about a billions of barrels of potential oil. and to recover that there would certainly be several small pads, maybe one or two medium-sized pads. we're talking ten-acre drill sites or 12-acre drill sites and maybe a few central drill pads that are a couple hundred acres that have -- >> but there would have to be, i presume, to get the oil outed there have to be pipelines, right, from each pad, each drill site? >> for sure you have to have a way to trans transport from the drill sites to some central location. >> and the way to transport is a pipeline? >> yes, sir. >> that would be an easier way to say than a way to transport. so we're talking about a pipeline. but in terms of the 2,000 acres we're only talking about the feet of the pipeline, is that correct, not the shadow of the pipeline that's above the ground? >> i don't know that part. i heard that for the first time today. >> and how many wells would you be talking about in an area like this? someone mentioned 500 wells. is that -- what are we talking about here? my calculation was a couple of thousand to get out 10 billion barrels over ten years. >> i'm not the right person to answer that. >> do you know what the production is of your we will, one h 102 the one had you the chart on. >> that well was finished in the last month so i don't have production. it's not my well either it's our client's well we drilled it for them. >> give me production for a typical well that you have in service. >> again we drill a lot of wells for our clients and i'm not the twoun ask. there's a huge range. some wells we drill are not production wells, they're injectors or other types of wells. >> you see what i'm trying to get at here. how many wells are we talking about many n this space? is it ten, a thousand, a hundred thousand. >> it would be years to build a. tps if it's smaller it would be 50 wells. >> you characterize this as a cartoon. this shows 50 wells. i mean, i don't take much from the size of the little we will thing, but that only shows 50 wells. if we're talk about a hundred or five hundred, you're talking about a lot more dots on this map, is that correct? >> senator king, question drill 50 wells from a ten-acre drill pad. >> okay. so you're considering a multiple -- the chart that you're calling those separate wells, is that correct? >> i'm not referring -- >> you're saying each line is a separate we will, those -- i'm just trying to understand this. >> which chart. >> the picture you put up you said you can do ten laterals. >> that was a penta lateral we will which means there are five production we will bores off of one single surface location. >> right. >> one single we will of a of the surface. >> so each one of those you would call a we will and even though there's only one surface. >> that's correct. >> technially for those in the industry those are five wells, yes, sir. >> i think it's important as we work through this to try to understand if we're talking about a billion -- i'm sorry, ten billion barrels over some period of time, what's the period of time and what does that imply in terms of the number of wells and how many -- how many laterals are there? time trying to determine what we're really talking about here on the face of the earth. and that's what i'm -- that's what i'm searching for. i think you answered my question the calving period is the spring or the summer? >> yes, sir, the end of may and for the few weeks of june. >> is there -- another question, i guess, mr. shut. you're the guy to try to answer this. is there anything special about this 1002 area in terms of oil and gas? there's this -- i look opt map that senator sullivan gave us and there's a huge area set aside for oil and gas drilling much larger than this area. do we have indications that this san extraordinarily rich area that we're talking about, this part of anwr? >> senator, i'm probably not the expert you need on that chemical weapon, although certainly the outcrops of the sand stone reservoirs that are producing at the bay and the source rocks that are -- that cause the oil to be at the bay are similar or the same. >> what i'm getting at is we're talking about a special area here that's been set aside for a long time and we're saying we need to drill here and what i'm trying to determine is, is this -- is this area particularly productive in -- or could we not drill in some of the other areas that are literally called the oil and gas drilling area? >> i'm going to start with the -- the side, senator. i've heard people refer to a special area which i do not want to minimize at all, but many areas of alaska are special, those of us who grew up in different parts of alaska call our own section of alaska god's country without minimizing the fact that all of alaska's god's country. >> you're incorrect on that. my town in smain truly god's country. >> i take your point though, thank you. >> with regard to the question about oil prospect activity, there's a difference between what the usgs says about the npra ant likely fields you might find through there through exploration and the scale that might be available in the 1002 yar and the orders are magnitude different. >> that's important to know. >> i was just going add i think usgs would be a good source for information on the resources that they predict either in 1002 or npra. >> thank you. thank you, madam chair. >> senator cantwell. >> i would defer to my colleagues that's been here waiting. >> all right. >> thank you. >> we will next turn to senator cortez masto then. >> thank you. i appreciate that. thank you. let me follow you on the line of questioning with senator king because i'm getting a little confusesed. if i understand this correctly section 1002 we're look at is opening up the coastal plain for drilling and that's 1.574 million acres, is that true? so i'm -- and that's yes? you're understanding? yes. so i'm confused as to this where the 2,000 acre limitation comes from. i think this is referring to house energy bill hr 6 which isn't before us so i'm not sure what thaufl means. but i do want to get a better understanding if we're talking about drilling in 1.57 million acres, which is the coastal plain, i do want to get a better understanding of how many pads we're talking about. how many drill pads. and i think from my perspective it would help to have a better understanding in the npra, how many drill pads are there right now and how many more potentially can you -- how much more drilling can dlur at the npra and why isn't that occurring instead of opening up the coastal plain? and i'll open that up to however we want to start, please. >> thank you for the question, senator. i work both on the npra as well as the arctic refuge and in the npra, historically there have been both high numbers in terms of how much likely oil and lower numbers more recently, but now there's a reassessment going on and there have been some new discoveries, that's why i made the point the slope of the oil going through the transalaska pipeline is going up. there are new discoveries and there are new ways of getting into existing reserves that are increasing, which is good. it's good for alaska, i'm an alaskan, think that's good. drill in less sensitive areas as you both are referring to. and usgs is looking at the npra right now and there's a lot of activity around that in terms of coming up with a new estimate which may actually show quite a bit. there's not much data for the arctic refuge right now. >> okay. and so there's potential still to -- we're waiting for the data for the npra to make that determination. how many drill pads there are now? >> there's the cd-5 one and there ka nocco phillips is working on greater moose's tooth, a new project and a new discovery that's just bin beginning in the willow area. but it could be quite large. they're trying to delineate that. one more quick point. we had quite a bit of discussion about balance in the last panel and the fact that the north slope is a large landscape and the points you're making about drilling in the npra, we think that really does represent balance. that's where some areas are open for development, some areas are not because they are quite sensitive. certainly there's a lot going on in the state lands right now and that's also considered by us and others less sensitive, and that's fully appropriate. >> okay. and then just to get a better understanding, and thank you for the graphs because that helps really kind of put it in perspective what we're talking about. so if i understood correctly, each pad has a potential having more than one drill hole or whatever you want to call it, right? and then from that drill hole comes the various wells, and there could be more four to five or six wells from just one bore hole, is that correct? >> you're asking very technical questions and i don't have any technical answers. >> i'm just going off your graph. >> that's what it looked like to. >> he that's one, and sometimes -- >> so each drill pad -- so if we talk about -- because you talk about the size of your drill pads and over the course -- with new technology they've decreased in their footprint. and it looks like from 65 acres now to potential 12 acres. so how many of those bore holes could potentially come from a 12-acre pad is my question? if you don't -- you may not technically be able to answer that and i'll figure out another way to get that answered. i'm just curious to know. >> i thiet sound like a lawyer here but it depends. you can assume from a 12-acre pad that dozens of surface bore holes can be drilled and then if appropriate multilegalitier rals out of those that would count as additional wells. so, you know, somewhere between 10 and 100 depending on the appropriateness of the design just as a rough ballpark. >> okay. please go ahead, if you have any comments. >> thank you. you gave half of the answer that i was going to give but also it probably helps to put in perspective the order of events. if the coastal plain is open to exploration, seismic exploration starts and it comes and it goes away and then targets are established and then exploration drilling occurs on ice pads. and the rules about drilling exploration drills are to plug and abandon it when you're done, cut the casing below surface so it disappears when you're done with exploration. in the event of discovery are then you move into the parodyne that you're talking about with pads on the ground and radiating outward. so there's thins that have to happen. exploration should occur everywhere and then swe should make reasonable decisions about development when it happens. so there's two different aspects to drilling exploration and development. >> thank you. thank you very much. >> i notice my time support. appreciate that, madam chair. >> thank you. senator heinrich. >> thank you, madam chair. i'm going to go back to this chart again because while it may be just, you know, effectively it's just an illustration, but having some experience with development in the permanentium basin and the san juan basin, having seen the development around prud doe bay, i would note for my colleagues with at least the ones that i'm familiar with, like mule deer and antelope, it's not the well pads that are the substantial part of the disturbance and which can impede the movement of wildlife, it's everything that comes with those well pads. it's the roads, it's the gravel mines, it's the electrical transmission, it's the pipelines. and the more linear barriers you put in the face of any sort of migration, the less likely that migration is to occur. so rather than look at an illustration, i would just suggest maybe all of us who are staff can do a little google earth and go look at what the bay looks like having flown over that. because, you know, it's not the well pads that got my attention, it's all those other linear obstacles to migration. i have a question for ms. epstein. one of my frustrations with this process is that we're doing this through budget reconciliation. and this n the context of a budget bill rather than a regular legislative process. and i assume we're doing that because it would be difficult, if not impossible, to pass this as standalone legislation and get 60 votes for if the but one of the requirements for that budget process is that we produce a billion dollars of new revenue over the next two years. a new report out this week casts some serious doubt on whether that's realistic. you can walk us through some numbers and talk about what would be necessary in flar terms of reasonable bonus bids? because that's the most likely income to come in in the first ten years. and whether or not we could hit that target or not or what a realistic estimate might be? >> thank you, senator heinrich. and i would say that i share your frustration about the speed of this process and the inability to get all the information that decisionmakers need, the senate needs to make a responsible decision for just as an example, i have my colleague a senior ecologist has quite a number of responses to dr. cronin's testimony that i think would be very beneficial and we will submit that to the committee and that would be important so that you would have a full picture of the -- the actual nature of the caribou development relationship as well as polar bears. >> you can add that to the record. >> yes, thank you. in terms of directly answering your question, i can partly answer. the -- with the price of oil being what it is now in the $50 a barrel range, alaska is not terribly attractive in new areas to -- to oil companies. and at the same time we have lots of shale oil development in the lower 48 that is more inexpensive. so the idea that they would pay extra and go for bonus bids to be sure they had a piece of this very controversial area that a lot of companies would actually even shy away from is unlikely. i just participated in a national academy of sciences oil related committee on thursday and friday and i talked to some of my industry colleagues about the arctic refuge. and one comment i heard was that if -- if this was likely to be as productive, you know, there would be -- there would have been a lot more activity, more wells previously. >> my calculations are that it would have to be a little over $1,300 an acre in terms of bonus bids, which is about six times the historical average. >> right. >> i don't have a ton of time left. >> i guess i'll just end with this. i guess we have to come one a billion dollars, but we produced a lot of oil and gas in the state of new mexico, there are some places we will never ever drill. the vi vee dal, the national wildlife refuge. >> i think we need to be careful about what doors we're opening today because we will not be able town do this once the substantial reserve is found. and to find that billion dollars, i would never advocate mining for uranium in the grand canyon or doing geo thermal resources in yellow stone and having been to the refuge, it's a wildlife refuge. that's why it's called the arctic national wildlife refuge. it is not a petroleum reserve and we should remember that. >> thank you, senator. senator duckworth. >> thank you, chairman murkowski and senator cantwell for convening this. i also want to thank our witnesses to traveled far for being at this hearing. i want to expand economic tint forworking families in illinois and across the nation. >> i know every state faces unique challenges when it comes to supporting industries and new jobs and i recognize how important the oil industry has been to the chairwoman's home state of alaska. however, when it comes to dramatically expanding oil extraction operations in areas like the arctic national wildlife refuge i have serious questions concerning the potential for catastrophic incidents that could call irrelevant represent ashl harm. difficult and tough questions must be addressed before approving any massive expansion of drilling operation dollars. for when we were discussion oil extraction at the scale and vision in this republican budget it's not a matter if an oil spill will occur but rather a matter of when and how bad will it be. and we've heard a lot about advances and directionally drilling today and setting aside the engineering jargon, you can explain in plain english it f it's nor dangerous to drill in the arctic and why, ms. epstein? >> thank you, snarp, for the question. the arctic is remote. there aren't a lot of additional resources if there are problems. those have to be brought in, flown in. that has happened when we've had a blowout just this last spring. bp, a well resource company, the per perma frost around an old well was melting and it was quite a serious safety situation sch which is of concern to operators and their employees, absolutely. so we have had situations where it is frigid and cold and you can't work then. so you need a lot of very specific arctic expertise. it is very much an area where you need to know what you're doing. >> thank you. and i understand that the state of alaska completed a report in november 2010 which reviewed over 6,000 north slopes bills from 1995 to 2009. analysis of this report indicates there was an oil spifl 1,000 gallons of oil or more nearly every two months from 1995 to 2009. ms. epstein when the oil spills and we have to clean it up, is, again, the oil spill cleanup more challenging in the arctic compared with drilling on land elsewhere and if oil spilled in the area of the land in debate today what would the effects of that oil spill be? >> thank you for the question. it would depend a bit about the time of year, if you had an oil spill in winter and it landed just on frozen tundra you might be able to clean it up quickly. if you had a spill that ended up in a waterway, however, and flowed in the -- to, say, the coleville river and onward into the sea, tremendous impacts tots ecosystem. these are fragile areas. the water's only flowing some of the year so that's when all the biology and all the activities take place. it would be quite damaging. >> is there any legislation we could consider that would make it safer and less prone to spills in the arctic? >> best we could do is tweak it. we're going to have spills. it's a complicated industry, hard to be on top of everything all the time at the same time companies are trying to minimize costs. so it's very tough. we can't prevent spills. there's no evidence -- i don't think you'd find nirch anyone from the industry that will say we will stop all spills. >> thank you. and, alexander, i just want to start off by saying that the alaskan first people's are some of the -- have served our united states military at rates per capita far greater than so many of our other population and with extreme courage and dedication and just want to thank all of the representatives of the first people here today for that. mr. alexander, is your community alone in its concerns or are your fears shared by other tribes? you can please remind us what the stakes are if your people cannot longer depend on caribou and substa nens hunting? >> senator, mr. alexander wars part of the first panel so he's not with us. perhaps you can ask that question of him after the hearing, but i apologize for that. >> no worries. thank you. with that i yield back. >> senator cantwell. senator franken. >> thank you to the ranking member and the chair. dr. cronin, in your research looking at caribou populations, you found that they were not significantly impacted by the presence of an oil field road, is that correct? >> yes. >> thank you. for this research, did you ever receive any funding from oil companies? >> yes. >> okay. do you think receiving funding from oil companies could buy us the outcomes of your research? >> no, sir. >> did you ever consider that the same oil companies that funded your research would use your work as justification for drilling and that might have been a motivation of theirs? >> well, first of all, the data we used in probably the paper you're talking about is the 2004 paper with noelle as the senior author. we used the alaska state department fish and game data in addition to the data collected by our group. the oil industry funded studies sometimes as a requirement for permits or for stipulations for operating after the permits were granted and they wanted to get pre and post development date in some cases nor other cases just post development to, in this case, look at the distribution of caribou. so whether was used to justify future drilling, it was done with the intent of publishing in the peer review scientific literature, which we did, and all the references i give many my written testimony are such. >> okay. well, the manu cript says it was developed with support from exxonmobil and bp exploration, is that right? >> well, depending which paper, sure. >> all right. thank you. ms. epstein, could you talk about why this refuge was preserved in the first place, what are the distinguishing factors that make the arctic refuge coastal plain different from other areas on the arctic coastal plain and why does that matter? >> yes, thank you, senator franken. one important characteristic is the coastal plain there is very narrow compared to further west where the bay field is. and that means that the area that the caribou go to birth their calves is smaller. there aren't alternatives. they go there because they receive insect relief and they also are able to avoid predators. they can see them coming, in other words. beyond that, it is a intact ecosystem with the full range of species. it's a national treasure in a lot of ways that many refer to as america's serengeti. i, myself, was there just once, not related to work. i was there recreationally and i did see enormous numbers of caribou and really felt that i saw one of the world's great migrations happening that i felt very privileged to see. and there are few special places like that in the world. it was quite beautiful. >> i included a personal photo in my testimony. thank you. >> well, you're right, the arctic national wildlife refuge is home to many unique plant and animal species and including critical happen at that time for the polar bear which is listed as threatened under the endangered species act and of course for the pork cue pine caribou that's essential as we heard from the last panel is essential to the gwich'in people. mr. bordeaux, how important the pristine areas like the arctic refuge be to wildlife and indigenous people? >> thank you have senator. i think we heard from the other upon he will that client change is very real and dramatic the further you move north and i think, again, the other panelists have described climate change impacts on many things of human life and wildlife. and i think that in areas that ms. epstein's described for the coastal plain is, for example, a very finite calving area, the effects of climate change on that, you know, could be substantial. and i think the answer, if there is one to your question have really we don't really know. and i think that's one of the issues surrounding this debate is in the absence of knowing things as science or fact or what the impacts may be, i think that argues for a cautionary approach. >> thank you. thank you madam chair. >> thank you, sir. >> well, i definitely agree. i find the debate that we've had so far interesting just because when i think of alaska i think of its great beauty and, you know, i think of -- i think of john muir and his exploration of the glaciers of glacier bay that made it popular and what it is dd and yet those glaciers are receding. i don't know if anybody's able to paint sign that says cruise ships don't bother anymore because i'm pretty sure alaska still wants them to dum but that's what we're continuing to threaten here by continuing to proceed. so you're undermining not only this wildlife refuge but you're undermining a very important way of life that is even larger than just the wildlife refuge. so, to me, i hold that dear. but those are important elements of the northwest economy and just because i represent the state of washington, patty murray and i don't get to decide what happens at mount rainier national park just because it's in our state. when federal land is designated, we have a lot of discussion with a lot of locals, by, no, you don't get to make the decision just because you represent that state. i wanted to ask you there's been so much discussion about whether this wildlife refuge and its purpose that it was created for can coexist with oil development on the refuge. can it yes or no? >> i would answer no and, as i said in my testimony, when you look at the purposes in statute that establish the refuge that included wildlife and the natural diversity, references to wilderness, similar to the executive order establishing the range, the predecessor of the refuge in 1960 talks about those same sorts of values and outstanding resourc resources. when you look at the 1987 report that was authorized by congress for the 1002 area, very emphatic references to wilderness resource trors wildlife resources, those were also brought out in the more comprehensive conservation plan, ccp, that was just completed for the refuge in 2015 after four years of effort to look at the new science, look at management options, look at the purposes of the refuge and the refuge administration act. and they reiterated again those very important natural resources, particularly wildlife and wilderness that were really exemplified by the refuge. and that recommendation which i was interesting that deputy director s director she hahn did not mention was for the recognition of coastal plain for the refuge. >> a nice way to say about his system was very selective. but we have sent a letter to the secretary and this should be clear, we should just get a yes or no answer from him about the purposes you gave me one today and the answer is no and i think that's what any scientist would tell you. so what i object to besides the sham process that we've been going through here to just hurry this through with 51 votes it out to be clear. if people want to open the wildlife refuge just admit you're going destroy the refuge. you can't sit here and tell our colleagues and try to deny by stacking a hearing and not giving us information and not having the scientists that somehow that's not the case. because it is. so you can decide you don't want the refuge, i disagree. i think it's one of the most unbelievable things that we have on planet earth, not just in the united states, on plannest earth. it's that intact. and what we're going to learn from it and continue to preserve from our heritage and our past and the wildlife that's there is just unbelievable. people spend now thousands of dollars gortat serengeti to look at this. did anybody think in alaska in the near future as the arctic ice continues to melt that there wouldn't be people that wanted to come up and visit it in a more recreational environment? to me it's well worth pursuing. so we'll see when the secretary answer answers our letter but you can't have both and that's what scientists are going to tell us. so people should choose they want to drill and destroy, i would preserve because, as i've said before, i guarantee you we're all going to be gone in the future and it's going to be whether this great pristine place continues to give the next generation such a great, unbelievable look at what has exist on our planet before. and i agree with the gwich'in people, that's spirltual and she should preserve it. >> well, we clearly disagree this san either or proposition, it absolutely is not and for those of us who call alaska home, to suggest that we would disspoil our environment for short-term gain, i think is offensive. as an alaskan i'm offended by that. i respect every alaskan's opinion. i respect the fact that there are those who come from a different homeland than i might, being down down in the southeast, but i respect the views and opinions. and i think we recognize that as alaskans we have options. and our options i think at the beginning of the day and the end of the day we all want to get to the same place. that we have an economy that will allow us to stay in the most amazing place aand no matte your home, you want to be there and you have to have the ability to stay there. and when you live in a cold place, need to be able to have the means to keep warm. and i think about matthew rexford's family and the generations that came before him just one generation prior, it was -- it was a life and a lifestyle that was pretty harsh and pretty difficult. and literally trying to find firewood that would come down the river to keep the family home warm. so, again, as we think about the choices that we have as alaskans, we've always been in this place. we've always been in a place where we are resource rich. we are with a small population, our costs are high. but the effort to make sure that are we can continue to remain in this amazing place has to be one where we work to find the balance. where we ensure that we have the level of food security. if you are from fort yukon, you're going to rely on the caribou or the whale. and probably will for generations to come as long as we care for the land and the waters. and this is our challenge. this is our charge. i don't think any one of us wishes to be the one that says that we allowed rape, pillage and ruin on our land for short-term gain. that's not what this is about. and i think people forget that for 40 years now, 40 plus years we have been exploring, we have been produce, we have been giving revenue and jobs and opportunity to alaskans and to the country. and we have done so in a way that everybody still wants too come to alaska. those cruise ships, people want to come to alaska. so if we have -- if we have ignored our environment, that certainly isn't apparent. and so we do require the highest standards, i believe, in the country. i believe in the world. and we do that for good reason. because when the exploration winter period is over, we don't want to see the tracks on the tundra. if the winter trail led to a place that was not going to be productive, we're making sure that we're using our smarts and our intelligence and all that we have to develop the technologies that make some of these questions hard to answer. how you can predict how many -- how many pads we're going to need? 40 years ago the pad in prud doe was pretty significant and remains today. but nobody, nobody is talking about building another pru doe. because we bluff that even with pru doe-like resources, our technology will allow us to access this in a way that is more consistent with our respect for the environment. to be able to shrink that footprint, to be able to do so much more with a smaller area and to recognize what that delivers to us. so we don't know how many pads, we're not sure how many wells necessarily, because the technology is evolving every single day. to look, aaron, at the diagram and to hear your testimony that you've got one series of wells that's just in production now, one month ago, but knowing that by 2010 -- excuse me, 2020 what you will be able to access will be so much more than what you have been -- what have you put in place today, this is where the technology is takiyou've go the technology is takithe techng

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