Management and Protection of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Bureau of Land Management</SUBAGY> <CFR>43 CFR Part 2360</CFR> <DEPDOC>[BLM_HQ_FRN_MO4500177994]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1004-AE95</RIN> <SUBJECT>Management and Protection of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Bureau of Land Management, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This rule governs the management of surface resources and Special Areas in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (Reserve or NPR-A). The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages the NPR-A consistent with its duties under the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act, as amended (NPRPA), Federal Land Policy and Management Act, as amended, (FLPMA), and other authorities. The rule revises the framework for designating and assuring maximum protection of Special Areas' significant resource values and protects and enhances access for subsistence activities throughout the NPR-A. It also incorporates aspects of the NPR-A Integrated Activity Plan (IAP) approved in April 2022. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on June 6, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> James Tichenor, Advisor—Office of the Director, at 202-573-0536 or <E T="03">jtichenor@blm.gov</E> with a subject line of “RIN 1004-AE95.” For questions relating to regulatory process issues, contact Faith Bremner at <E T="03">fbremner@blm.gov.</E> Individuals in the United States who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability may dial 711 (TTY, TDD, or TeleBraille) to access telecommunications relay services. Individuals outside the United States should use the relay services offered within their country to make international calls to the point-of-contact in the United States. For a summary of the rule, please see the rule summary document in docket BLM-2023-0006 on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. List of Acronyms and Abbreviations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Section-by-Section Discussion</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Procedural Matters</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. List of Acronyms and Abbreviations</HD> To ease the reading of this preamble and for reference purposes, the following acronyms and abbreviations are used in the preamble: <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">ANILCA (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">BLM (Bureau of Land Management)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">ASRC (Arctic Slope Regional Corporation)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">FLPMA (Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">IAP (Integrated Activity Plan)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">ICAS (Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NPR-A or Reserve (National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NPRPA or the Act (Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act of 1976)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">UIC (Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation)</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Executive Summary</HD> The Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act of 1976 (NPRPA) gives the BLM three overarching mandates for managing the Reserve: (1) conduct an oil and gas exploration, leasing, and production program; (2) protect environmental, fish and wildlife, historical, and scenic surface resources from the impacts of that program through mitigation of reasonably foreseeable and significantly adverse effects; and (3) assure maximum protection for significant surface values from the impacts of the oil and gas program, including subsistence use, within Special Areas. Through this rulemaking process, the BLM is developing a more cohesive framework for these three mandates by establishing requirements and procedures for protecting the surface values of the Reserve while conducting the oil and gas program. The final rule implements the critical components of the statutory framework described above, establishing procedures for the BLM to mitigate reasonably foreseeable and significantly adverse effects of proposed oil and gas activities on the surface resources of the Reserve and to provide maximum protection for surface values within Special Areas for proposed oil and gas activities. The BLM will continue to follow the part 3130 regulations for managing oil and gas leasing and production in the Reserve. The rule updates the purpose of the subpart 2361 regulations to more accurately and completely reflect the scope of the regulations. The purpose of the updated regulations is to provide standards and procedures to implement 42 U.S.C. 6506a(b), which requires the Secretary to ensure that “[a]ctivities undertaken pursuant to this Act include or provide for such conditions, restrictions, and prohibitions as [she] deems necessary or appropriate to mitigate reasonably foreseeable and significantly adverse effects on the surface resources of the [NPR-A],” and to provide standards and procedures to implement 42 U.S.C. 6504(a), under which any exploration in Special Areas “shall be conducted in a manner which will assure the maximum protection of such surface values to the extent consistent with the requirements of this Act for the exploration of the [NPR-A].” The rule establishes new standards and procedures for managing and protecting surface resources in the Reserve from the reasonably foreseeable and significantly adverse effects of oil and gas activities. It requires the BLM, in each decision concerning oil and gas activity in the Reserve, to adopt measures to mitigate the reasonably foreseeable and significantly adverse effects on surface resources, taking particular care with surface resources that support subsistence. The rule requires the BLM to manage oil and gas activities in accordance with the IAP, enshrining longstanding BLM practice into regulations. In the BLM's experience, the IAP provides an invaluable means of evaluating management options, engaging the public, and guiding decision-making, consistent with the BLM's duties under NPRPA and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The rule codifies the five existing Special Areas and their significant resource values and management as currently established in Secretarial decisions and the 2022 IAP, and it establishes a process for designating, amending, and de-designating Special Areas in the future. The rule sets forth standards and procedures for managing oil and gas activities within Special Areas, confirming that the management priority within Special Areas is to assure maximum protection of significant resource values consistent with the requirements of the NPRPA for exploration of and production from the Reserve. The procedures detail requirements for analyzing proposed oil and gas leasing, exploration, development, or new infrastructure in Special Areas, including providing opportunities for public participation and consulting with federally recognized Tribes and Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) corporations that use the affected Special Area for subsistence purposes or have historic, cultural, or economic ties to the Special Area. The BLM must evaluate potential adverse effects on significant resource values and consider measures to avoid, minimize, or otherwise mitigate adverse effects to achieve maximum protection of significant resource values. The rule requires the BLM to manage Special Areas to protect and support fish and wildlife and their habitats and the associated subsistence use of those areas by rural residents, and it requires the BLM to provide reasonable access to and within Special Areas for subsistence purposes. The rule encourages the BLM to explore co-stewardship opportunities for Special Areas, including co-management, collaborative and cooperative management, and tribally led stewardship, fulfilling the special trust relationship that the Department of the Interior has with Tribes. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. The Need for the Rule</HD> The BLM is promulgating this final rule because the regulatory framework governing the management and protection of environmental, fish and wildlife, other surface resources, and Special Areas in the Reserve needs updating. Conditions throughout the Arctic have changed dramatically since 1977, when the BLM issued the current regulations for management of surface resources and Special Areas in the Reserve. Rapidly changing conditions, including the intensifying impacts of climate change on the Reserve's natural environment and Native communities, make it necessary and appropriate for the BLM to develop new regulations that account for and respond to these changing conditions and that require the BLM to regularly address changing conditions. In addition, the current regulations do not reflect the full management regime for the Reserve. This rule will provide a framework for management to protect Special Areas and surface resources in the Reserve, which requires a delicate balance between exploration for and development of oil and gas resources and protecting subsistence, recreational, fish and wildlife, historical, scenic, and other values. The applicable legal standards and procedures for management of the Reserve are currently scattered throughout several statutes and BLM regulations, plans, and guidance documents. For example, the existing regulations do not integrate with the BLM's development and use of IAPs, which have been used for more than two decades to guide management of lands within the Reserve. Although the BLM is not required to prepare a resource management plan for the Reserve under FLPMA, see 42 U.S.C. 6506a(c), it has chosen to produce and update the IAP through a public process and supported by anal ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 367k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━