MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
I'm Robert Siegel.
And we begin this hour with oil. Prices are up, and that means many of us are also paying more at the pump. In a moment, what to expect from gas prices in 2011. But first, to Alaska.
BLOCK: You've probably heard of the Arctic National Wildlife refuge and the battle over whether oil companies should be allowed to drill there. Well, now, a new battle is developing over some nearby public land. It's called the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, or NPRA. The government is working on a plan to guide drilling there.
And as NPR's Jeff Brady reports, environmental groups want some of the reserves set aside as wilderness.
JEFF BRADY: Before talking about the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, Lois Epstein of The Wilderness Society pulls out a big map in her Anchorage office.
(Soundbite of footsteps)
Ms. LOIS EPSTEIN (Arctic Program Director, The Wilderness Society): Sit down for a second.
BRADY: Her finger moves east to west, starring at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, then across state land on the North Slope before settling on the NPRA. It's huge, about the size of Indiana. Originally, it was set aside for the military, then in the 1970s, reserved for domestic oil production.
Today, the reserve is mostly undisturbed, and Epstein is among those who want parts of it protected.
Ms. EPSTEIN: The Bureau of Land Management recognizes already that there are some special areas in the reserve - Teshekpuk Lake, which is known for its bird life.
BRADY: Epstein says if you really want a feel for what the NPRA is like, John Schoen at the Audubon Society is the guy to talk to. He spends a lot of time there camping and doing research.
Mr. JOHN SCHOEN (Senior Scientist, Alaska Audubon Society): This is truly wild country. You see grizzly bears walking down a valley. You run into wolves.
BRADY: Schoen says during certain times of year, you can see huge bands of caribou.
Mr. SCHOEN: And they're moving through, and you just see waves of these animals. It must be like what Lewis and Clark saw with the bison when they came across the country.
BRADY: The caribou are important for Alaska natives, like Delbert Rexford. He's a community leader from Barrow and says any development in the petroleum reserve has to consider caribou migration.
Mr. DELBERT REXFORD (Member, Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope): Well, we don't want that interrupted. I mean, they've been migrating and using a certain migration route for - since time immemorial, for centuries.
BRADY: Rexford says it's also important to protect sensitive areas where geese molt. The birds shed their feathers in the summer and are vulnerable because they can't fly. But those molting areas are near some of the richest oil deposits in the NPRA.
Ms. MARILYN CROCKETT (Executive Director, Alaska Oil and Gas Association): Mother Nature has been very cruel to the oil and gas industry.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BRADY: Marilyn Crockett heads the Alaska Oil and Gas Association. She says production is declining on state land, and now, companies must turn to federal land on the North Slope. She dismisses any talk of creating wilderness in the petroleum reserve.
Ms. CROCKETT: Frankly, the state of Alaska doesn't need any more wilderness areas. Something on the order of two-thirds of the state is already set aside in wilderness preserves, wildlife refuges, wilderness areas. And so it just would be entirely inappropriate if that's what we end up at the end of the day.
BRADY: The U.S. Geological Survey released an assessment in October that reduces by 90 percent the amount of oil that's likely to be recovered in the NPRA. But even with the reduced estimate, there's still about 900 million barrels of oil in the reserve. That's about twice what the U.S. gets from the Gulf of Mexico in a year.
Over at the Bureau of Land Management office in Anchorage, Bob Schneider says a plan for the NPRA should be finished in about a year. He says Congress laid out several mandates for the huge reserve.
Mr. BOB SCHNEIDER (Anchorage District Manager, Bureau of Land Management): There is a hierarchy, and that's why this plan is dealing with oil and gas leasing. It's not a protection plan, per se, but we are looking at how we can protect sensitive resources at the same time.
BRADY: Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior recently announced a new policy requiring the BLM to create an inventory of land with wilderness characteristics and then protect them. You could argue that nearly all of the NPRA would qualify as wilderness, but that same policy leaves plenty of wiggle room for the BLM to allow drilling within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
Jeff Brady, NPR News.