Federal officials plan to use curtailed environmental reviews to examine an oil and gas lease sale and reevaluate potential harms to endangered beluga whales in Alaska’s Cook Inlet.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is part of the Interior Department, said in a Federal Register notice scheduled to be published Thursday that it would complete a supplemental review about environmental harms in Alaska’s oldest producing oil and gas basin by the end of this year.
BOEM will not be publishing a draft version of the analysis or offering an opportunity for public comment, contrary to what the agency said in April.
The supplemental environmental impact statement was ordered last year by a federal judge in Alaska who ruled that BOEM had violated environmental laws by not evaluating the cumulative impacts oil and gas activity in the area could have on the whales. Beluga whales numbered around 331 individuals in 2022, the last population estimate from NOAA Fisheries.
