when congress last debated opening anwr to oil and gas development, people made arguments about the use of new technology and how it would minimize the impact on anwr. since then a lot of the claims have borne out in the industry. we will share some of them today. a couple are directional. extended reach multi lateral drilling techniques that allow 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. and so you could drill a few square miles around a pad. i have a figure that's been shown before in the hearing today. you can see a couple, three square miles using technology from the 1970s and fast forward to the run on the far right, 12-acre pad where a rig can reach out and cover 125 square miles. that means that you can space pads in modern development up to ten miles apart and that there is little to no surface impact between the pads. it's a fairly dramatic shift in technology in that time period. i would like to say that the impact of those technological changes are not theoretical. we have got another graphic coming up here. doion's rig 142 completed a well in alaska's north slope that's five production wells drilled from a single surface well bore. each of those wells is now producing from different reservoir stands through three fault blocks. the total length is 39,000 feet. 28,000 feet is in the production zone. if our client had developed the 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 same resources we were able to access from a single surface location. doion is building an extended reach drilling rig, also referenced earlier. rig 26. sthal be able to reach out even further. that's the 35,000 horizontal feet mentioned by several people earlier today. that's the capability that allows the reach out for the full 125 square miles from a single self-surface well pad. for perspective of those here in the room, rig 26 will 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 the potomac river six and a half 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. in the changes in technology have allowed smaller well pads on the slope, north slope, and they -- up to 70% smaller, and they are 70% to 80% fewer pads since prudo bay was developed in the 1970s. it looks like the 19,000 acre footprint goes down to a few hundred acres to develop the alpine field on the western side. finally, this has also been referenced -- i have it upside down. the -- the impact of exploration on the environment is minimal. the difference between exploration and production, you can see here a location in the npra with our rig 141. we have got the summer version of the same location, senator sullivan mentioned this before. also upside down. where there is almost no lasting surface impact from exploration. 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 in the 1970s with the development of prudo bay. we are proud to employ hundreds of our alaska native shareholders. we do it environmentally safe and protection of our employees is paramount but to also provide income to our shareholders. a simple rig could have an impact of $40 million for the shareholders. those are not theoretical numbers. that's the reality we have had for the number of years times the number of rigs we have working. in short, madam chairwoman. we are proud to be here today. we're supportive of opening anwr only if we can ensure ourselves of the protection of the porcupine caribou herd as i mentioned earlier in my testimony. >> thank you very much. let's next go to miss epstein. welcome. >> thank you very much chairman murkowski and though she is not here, 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. i am lois epstein the arctic program director for the wilderness society. my home is in anchorage. our organization's scientists began working in the region in the 1930s. as an alaska licensed engineer i'm part of that legacy. anwr is a vast wilderness landscape of tundra plains. forest. peaks and coastal lagoons. there is no other place like it in america. for thousands of years the area has been home to gwich-in and other communities and has sustained them. it provides vital habitat for more than 45 species of mammals including one of alaska's largest care bu herds. polar, grizzly bears. sheep and 160 species of birds who migrate from the refuge to breed there from all 50 states. the arctic refuge is the crown jewel of our nation's national wildlife refuge system. the coastal plain is widely recognized at the biological heart of the refuge. the coastal plain is as important to our nation's national heritage as yellowstone and the grand canyon where we don't choose to drill. now, contrast this pristine wild place with oil and gas exploration and production, which is complicated and messy, and a lot has not changed over the years to make it less so. even the most well financed operators have blowouts and spills. just this year bp had a production well blowout due to thawing permafrost 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're concerned for the potential for additional blowouts. in 2012 there was an exploratory well blowout on the north slope that spewed 42,000 gallons of mud. it took a month to stop the leak. there have been 121 crude oil spills on the north slope during the past five years where approximately two per month. a 2010 state study showed almost five spills each year on the north slope over a thousand gallons. 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 to 2,000 acres as some have said. the 2,000 acre calculation does not include roads, gravel mines or pipelines except for the limited places where their support posts touch the ground. there would be year-round air pollution and noise from generators. trucks, aircraft, processing facilities. long-distance pipelines and gravel road that could deter some caribou from crossing and cost them energy and waste from drilling operations and living quarters that require 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 is pad size. roads and air strips are still needed, pipelines are still required, and pollution and industrial noise and toxic spills are still inevitable. because of higher costs due toening loer wells, directional drilling may or may not be used for exploratory drilling. as discussed in the may 2011 hearing in this company oil companies prefer not to use directional drilling for exploratory wells because it provides less technical information about subsurface conditions. directional drilling rhetoric is in some respects a trojan horse for access to the entire arctic refuge coastal plain for oil production. neither the 2,000 acre provision nor directional drilling would prevent the entire coastal plain from becoming industrialized. arctic refuge drilling is not needed. transalaska oil pipeline flow is up 6% during the past three years, and the alaska department of natural resources expects the pipeline's throughput to continue to increase through the late 2020s. i have a figure -- figure two in my testimony shows that. significant new discoveries 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 cbo report was issued with limited documentation in february 2012. the report estimates 5 billion in bonus bids for coastal plain leases split 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's highly unlikely revenue and bonus bids on the coastal plain leases will come close to cbo it's or others' estimates. since 2000 the average north slope on shore bid has been $34 an acre. inclusion of the arctic refuge in the budget is less about meeting revenue targets and more about approving a controversial problematic matter to open the arctic refuge coastal plain's oil development without the possibility of a filibuster. it would be a black mark for alaska and this congress with future generations to industrialize and essentially destroy such a unique place. thank you for this opportunity to discuss this unique and important region. i am happy to answer your questions. >> thank you, miss epstein. mr. glenn, welcome. >> thank you, madam chairman, committee members. i am 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 is richard glenn, i am the vice president of lands for arctic slope regional corporation. it's an alaska native corporation created by congress in 1971. it's headquartered on the north slope and includes villages from the west to the east in the arctic region of alaska from point hope, wainwright, and other places. the residents in north slope have always depended upon subsistence resources from the land, the rivers and ocean. i am a tribal member. mr. shutt is a tribal member. matthew rexford who spoke before is a tribal member. our lieutenant governor is a tribal member. i was particularly stung by the ranking member's comments that said she didn't see tribal members. and 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. i am also not here to debate the sacredness of the land on either side of the brooks range, the north or south. for us, all the lands are sacred. they contain the bones of our ancestors. and i am not talking about ancient people. i am talking about people in living memory. we didn't start burying our dead until around the 1920s. 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, where the person died. so ancient sod houses, up until the early 1900s. carry the bones of our people. and some of my ancestors' bones. my grandmother's. grandfather's grandmother are in prudhoe bay. others are scattered along the canadian bay. our people are named after the places. the places are named after the people. and some of it is state land. some is federal land. some is native owned land. it's all equally sacred. yet we depend upon the land for development and food. and i don't wish to trivialize anyone's dependence on the resources because ours is equally as important. asrc as a corporation owns a piece of this heritage, 92,000 acres of land on the coastal plain of anwr along with matthew rexford's village corporation. these lands hold resource potential for oil and gas development. i am a geologist by training. i helped drill and develop natural resources on the north slope. i know the practices related to drilling. and i have 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 ornate and efficient diagrams that you have seen here on the posters that mr. shutt presented so 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 river delta and to the west where the native folks from another village a hundred miles also own resource potential 500 wells have been drilled to depths around 8,000 or 9,000 feet radiating outward as far as five or six miles. on these 500 wells, production wells, injector wells, done from four basic central facilities for drilling, covering maybe 300 acres of land. so now we're talking real-world examples, real-world numbers of wells for, at its peak, hundreds of thousands of barrels a day in production. that's the kind of development that we envision moving into the coastal plan of anwr. this is a cartoon. this diagram shows dramatic exaggerations. if you follow the scale of this map, the dots themselves are two miles across each. the well symptobols are three ms high. the pipelines, as they're shown on this map, a pipeline 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 learned in production is production declines. starts at a peak and begins to decline. the lion in the room on alaska production is prudhoe bay. the prudhoe bay and the river oil fields were super giant oil fields. and we're on the shoulders of their decline. the new discoveries as significant as they are and as thankful as i am that they've been discovered, they can't match the slope of the decline. they only change its 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 the alaska native land owners and the folks from the arctic slope region cannot realize their right to economic self-determination if congress fails to lift the prohibition on safe and responsible exploration and development of the coastal plain. so congress needs to act. my organization, it was agreement made between congress and the tribes of alaska. we didn't ask for it. in fact, we fought against it, but we are living with the results. and so, in our region we have a braided relationship of municipalities, tribes and ansl ancillary corporations braided together like a rope. so you can't separate tribe from corporation and you can't separate our mothers' languages from the language of discourse we're using here today. i could speak in the language of my mother. 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 poktovic. today's hearing shows there is a lack of attention paid to them. listen to what they are saying. they need an economy. they need development in their area. they want the freedom to do what the rest of the country seemingly takes for granted. we are talking about reliable power and water and schools and the ability to use sanitation that keeps their kids healthy. i strongly recommend the committee look at the testimony of the foekts frlks from the vif pock tovic. we don't agree 100% but the majority do agree. we believe wildlife and development can coexist. they already do today. we're collaring caribou that are cavaling in the area of country development around the bay and river. this is the central caribou herd. the alaska fishing game and world wildlife biologists are a collaring caribou that are calving in the area of infrastructure and migrating south to be hunted to our neighbors to the south. i've had the honor of taking some of you on tours of north slope development. we see caribou there underneath pipelines. sometimes underneath facilities like man camps and hotels. when they're trying to get away from summer mosquitos, caribou will go anywhere. the caribou aren't afraid. >> we're going to have to ask you to wrap up. >> caribou aren't afraid because they're not being hunted there. so wildlife and infrastructure can coexist. we speak in favor of the opening of the 1002 area. it will be good for our region, state and country. >> welcome. >> thank you for the privilege to testify today on the arctic national wildlife refuge. today i'm testifying as a retired public servant and private citizen. my past lives over 45 years in alaska have included serving on the alaska state ledgislature ad most recently special assistant to the secretary of the interior for alaska affairs. i would confess from the onset that i have worked for politicians and organizations that are favor that have favored drilling in the arctic refuge and those who have opposed development. since the passage of the alaska national lands conservation act 40 years ago, i have witnessed the decades of debate on the issue of permitting 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 the last piece of america's arctic is more appropriately left as wilderness, as a far more valuable legacy for future generations. i've had the opportunity to hike the mountains and float wild rivers to observe herds of caribou and polar bears and fly over thousands of snow geese on the refuge. there can be no denying that the arctic refuge is one of the most special and spectacular places on the planet. it stretches over 600 miles from the canadian border west ward. most of this area is available for oil and gas development. o further west leasing and development are proceeding in the 23 million acre national petroleum reserve alaska. now it is proposed to explore and development the last remaining part of the coastal plane, our national heritage. some argue that the 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 heart of the refuge. the coastal plain is an integral component of the refuge's ecosystem and provides key habitat for care riboucaribou, and polar bear. a report found that the 1002 area is the most biologically pickup truck t productive part for wildlife. are we at war? have we run out of gas? do we really think leasing revenues will significantly help our budgets. the answer is no and the answer no to the question of allowing oil and gas in the refuge. i was greatly moved by the national parks documentary. in the late 1950s a dedicated group of fairbanks residents had a best idea to protect wildlife in the northeast corner of alaska. in 1961 the 9 million acre range was created for the purpose of, quote, preserving unique wildlife, wilderness and recreational values. this great idea was renewed in 1980. the range was expanded and renamed the arctic national wildlife refuge. ken burns' documentary vividly demonstrates how the heros of our nation's history are those who had the foresight to protect and defend america's national treasures for the benefit and enjoyment of future generations. conversely, history and 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. >> dr. cronin, welcome to the committee. >> thank you for allowing me to testify. i'm matt cronin and i'm a biologi biologist. today i'll speak mostly about caribou and oil fields and the science. the science is large, the literature on the science is very large. and i'll provide a brief summary here orally and in my written testimony there's many citations to 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. senat senator king said something very insight full ful to me. he said we can't make good policy without good data. he said, give us the science in a way we can understand and absorb and nothing could be more important. so i understand that as non-scientists you need scientists to tell you things in a way you can understand. there's two problems. one is the science literature is very large and the other is separating the actual data and science from interpretation. 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. that was a major point of senator king's comments at that symposium that i really appreciated. with regard to caribou in the oil fields, there's 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 calving areas. 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 herd censuses are good in terms of quantifying the numbers of animals calving in the area but the population is much more dynamic and affected by many factors. the studies have shown some level of displacement of calving cows from roads, but it's not unequivoca unequivocal. 44% of the calves observed were within the first four kilometers of the roads. and then a 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. they go up on the pads and under pipelines for insect relief. the caribou herds themselves are quite dynamic. if you look at the charts in my written testimony, the graphs of the population, you'll see dramatic variation over time. natural populations in general in caribou in particular have very large population fluctuations naturally due to many things, winter conditions, pr predation. the biology is complex and the literature is large. the alaska department of fish and game stated last year, the impact of oil infrastructure on the central arctic herd has also been considered in the recent decline, but is not thought to be contributing to the decline since the herd grew substantially during peak oil development. several of the papers that i co-authored address this point up through the early 2000s. 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 has 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 impacts to caribou as long as mitigation measures are implemented. it's very simple. you simply limit activities during the calving period. you limit traffic, you limit aircraft, you limit noise and you get local knowledge to help you manage in the 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. we'll now have an opportunity for some questions. it was stated by my ranking member at the outset of the committee that in her view things haven't changed, not much as changed. and i think some of the arguments are still the same that manufacture of us recall from a long time ago. but what i've heard today is a 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 has 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 you mentioned mitigation, you mentioned those technologies. mr. glen, you speak of the caribou and the fact that the caribou are around the camps, they are on the roads, they are -- they are not deterred by man made activities. now we recognize that that is not while they are calving. that 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 co-management of caribou if we are to move forward with the 1002. i'd like to open up that discussion, if i may. let's start off with you, richard. >> thank you for the question. as dr. cronin stated, 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. it is because we are required to 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 summer time, which is when a lot of exploration happens in warmer climates, is not the time to try to move about on the tundra. everything you do that needs heavy equipment gouges itself into the thawed out surface. so over a few short years of learning the hard way, the industry 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, 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 summer time disturbance of the tundra. the machinery is going to be around when animals are less likely to be there. my upbringing is from the central part of the arctic slope where sometimes caribou are around year round. those of us who live from fairbanks north ward, we're caribou connoisseurs. we can tell the difference between pregnant and non-pregnant cows, for example. calving is a special time. if you're a caribou hunter, you know that a mother caribou that's already carrying a calf wants to lay down. she'll lay down anywhere as long as she's not being threatened by something. it's the pregnant caribou that shows the least -- i've hunted a lot of caribou. when they run away from you, the pregnant cows still stay laying on the ground or for some reason run away and come back. the pipelines are elevated so caribou can walk unimpeded underneath the pipelines. the facilities are concentrated under small, focused pads. there's a lot of stuff happening on one piece of gravel. the caribou are free to do whatever they need to do on the undisturbed tundra that surrounds the pads. >> i'm over my time. let's go to senator king. >> thank you. it's intimidating that you cite my own words. literally scores of people watched that presentation. let me go back to some of the questions i asked before. i think i've discerned the answer. it's not 2000 contiguous acres, that is correct? it's 2000 acres made up of lots of little pieces. >> it would certainly not be 2000 contiguous acres. >> so the drilling isn't limited to one 2000 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 billions of barrels of potential oil. to recover that, there would certainly be several small pads, maybe one or two medium-sized pads. we're talking ten or 12-acre drill sites. >> but i presume to get the oil out, there'd have to be pipelines from each pad. >> for sure you have to be a way to transport from the drill sites to a central location. >> the way to transport is a pipeline. >> yes, sir. so we're talking about a pipeline. in terms of the 2000 acres we're only talking about the feet of the pipeline, not shadow that's above the ground. >> i don't know that part. >> how many wells we ould we be talking about? someone mentioned 500 wells. micha michay calculation was a couple thousand. >> i'm not the right person to answer that. >> do you know what the production is of your well? >> that well was finished in the last month. it's not my well. it's our client's well. we drilled it for them. >> give me production for a typical well that you have in service. >> we drill a lot of wells for our clients. there's a huge range. some of the wells we drill are not production wells. >> what i'm trying to get at here is how many wells are we talking about in this space? >> it would be hundreds over time to develop a billion barrel field if that's what's there. if it's much smaller, it could be 50 wells. >> this shows 50 wells. i don't take much from the size of the little well thing, but that only shows 50 wells. if you're talking about 100 or 500, you're talking about a lot of dots on this map. >> we can drill 50 wells from a ten acre drill pad. >> okay. so you're considering -- you're calling those separate wells, is that correct? you're saying each line is a separate well -- i'm just trying to understand this. one drill pad. the picture you put up, you said you can do ten laterals. >> there are five well bores off of the surface. >> each one of those you would call a well even though there's only one surface? >> that is correct. technically those are five wells. >> i think it's important as we work through this to try to understand if we're talking about 10 billion barrels over some period of time, what is the period of time and what does that imply in terms of the number of wells and how many laterals are there. i'm trying to determine what we're really talking about here on the face of the earth. 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 first few weeks of june. >> another question. i guess mr. shutt you're the guy to try to answer this. is there anything special about this 1002 area in terms of oil and gas. i looked on the map that senator sullivan gave us. there's this huge area set aside for drilling, much larger than this area. do we have indications this is an extraordinarily rich area that we're talking about? >> senator, i'm probably not the expert you need on that question. although certainly the outcrops of the sandstone reservoirs and the source rocks that caused the oil to be there 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. we're saying we need to drill here. what i'm trying to determine is, is this area particularly productive -- 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 a slight aside. 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 is god's country. >> you're incorrect on that. my town in maine is truly god's country. i take your point. thank you. >> there is a difference between what the usgs says about the npra and the likely fields you might find there through exploration and the scale of what might be available in the 1002 area. >> i was just going to add that 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. i appreciate that. let me follow up on the line of questioning. i'm now getting a little confused. if i understand this correctly, section 1002 we're looking at is opening up the coastal plain for drilling. that's 1.57 million acres. is that true? yes. so i'm confused as to this where the 2000 acre limitation comes from. i think this is referring to house energy bill hr-6 which is not before us. i want to get a better understanding. if we are talking about drilling in 1.57 acres which is the coastal plain, i do want to get a better understanding of how many drill pads we're talking about. from my perspective it would help to have a better understanding in the npra, how many drill pads are there right now and how much more drilling can occur there at the npra and why isn't that occurring instead of opening up the coastal plain? 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. in the npra historical there have been both high numbers in terms of how much likely oil and lower numbers more recently. but now there is a reassessment going on and there have been some new discoveries. that's why i made the point that the slope of the oil going through the trans-alaska pipeline is going up. there are new discoveries and ways of getting into existing reserves that are increasing, which is good. it's good for alaska. i'm an alaskan. i think that's good. drill in less sensitive areas as you both are referring to. 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. there's not much data right now. >> so there's potential still -- we're waiting for the data for the npra to make that determination. how many drill pads are there now? >> there's the cd 5 one and the greater moose's tooth and then the willow area. but it could be quite large. and one more very quick point. we had quite a bit of discussion about balance in the last panel. the fact that the north slope is 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. that's also considered by some others less sensitive. and that's fully appropriate. >> and then just to get a better understanding -- and thank you for the grasp, because that helps put it into perspective. if i understood correctly, each pad has the potential of 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 four to five or six wells from just one bore hole. >> you're asking technical questions. >> i'm just going off your graph. >> that's one. >> so if we talk about -- because you talk about the size of your drill pads with new technology they've decreased in their footprint. it looks like from 65 acres now to potential 12 acres. how many of those bore holes could potentially come from a 12 acre pad is my question. >> again, i 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, multilaterals out of those that would count as additional wells. somewhere between 10 and 100 depending on the appropriateness of the design just as a rough ballpark. >> please go ahead. >> you gave half of the answer i was going to give. also it probably helps to put into perspective the order of the events. if the coastal plain is open to exploration, seismic exploration starts. it comes and it goes away. and targets are established. and exploration drilling occurs on ice pads. the rules about drilling exploration wells are to plug and abandon it when you're done, cut the casing below surface so i it disappears. in the event of discovery, then you move into the paradigm of pads on the ground and radiating outward from the reservoir. there's things that have to happen. exploration should occur everywhere. then we should make reasonable decisions about development when it happens. so there's two different aspects to drilling, exploration, then development. >> thank you very much. >> i'm going to go back to this chart again. while it may be just an illustration, but having some experience with development , i would just note for my colleagues that mule deer and antelope it's not the well pads that typically are the substantial part of the disturbance which can impede the movement of wildlife. it's everything that comes with the well pads. it's the roads. it's the gravel mines, the electrical transmission, the pipelines. and the more linear barriers you put in the face of any sort of may gas statio migration, the less likely that migration is to occur. 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. in the context of a budget bill rather than a regular legislative process. i assume we're doing that because it would be difficult if not impossible to pass this as stand alone legislation and get 60 votes for it. but one of the requirements of 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. can you walk us through some numbers and talk about what would be necessary in particular in 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. >> 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. just as an examplkpamexample, me has quite a number of responses to dr. cronin's testimony. we will submit that to the committee. that would be important so that you will have a full picture of the actual nature of the caribou development relationship as well as polar bears. >> add that to the record. >> in terms of directly answering your question, i can partly answer. 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 oil companies. at the same time, we have lots of 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. one comment i heard was that if this was likely to be as productive, there would have been a lot more activity, more wells previously. >> my calculations are that it would have to be a little over $1300 an acre in terms of bonus bids, which is about six times the historical average. i guess i'll just end with this. i guess we have to come up with a billion dollars but we produce a lot of oil and gas in the state of new mexico. there are some places we will never ever drill. i think we need to be careful about what doors we're opening today. because we will not be able to undo this once a substantial reserve is found. and to find that billion dollars, i would never advocate mining for uranium in the grand canyon. 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. >> thank you for convening this very important conversation. i also want to thank our witnesses who traveled far to join us. i know that every state faces unique challenges when it comes to supporting existing industries and creating 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 i'm extraction operations, i have serious questions concerning the potential for catastrophic incidents that could inflict irreparable harm. if the tragedy of deep water horizon should teach us anything, it is that difficult and tough questions must be addressed before approving any massive expansion of drilling operations. when we are discussing oil extraction, it's not a matter of if an oil spill will occur but rather a matter of when and how bad. we've heard a lot about advances in directionally drilling today. can you explain in plain english if it is more dangerous to drill in the arctic and why? >> thank you, senator, 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 had a blowout. just this last spring bp had something unexpected happen. the permafrost and an old well was falling. that resulted not in an enormous oil spill but quite a serious safety situation 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. 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. i that you understand the state of alaska completed a report in 2010 which reviewed over 6,000 north slope spills from 1995-2009. analysis indicates there was an oil spill of a thousand gallons of oil or more nearly every two months from 1995-2009. when the oil spills and we have to clean it up, is the cleanup more challenging in the arctic compared with drilling on land elsewhere? and if oil spilled in the area of debate today, what would the effects of that spill be? >> 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 floated to say the river and onward into the sea, tremendous impacts to the ecosystem. these are fragile areas. the water is only flowing some of the year. that's when all the biology, all the activities take place. it would be quite damaging. >> is there any legislation we could consider that would make drilling in the arctic safer and less prone to spills? >> 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. at the same time companies are trying to minimize cost. it's very tough. we can't prevent spills. i don't think you'd find anyone from the industry that would say we can stop all spills. >> mr. alexander, the alaska peoples have served far greater than so many of our other population and with extreme courage and dedication. is your community alone in its concerns or are your fears shared by other tribes? can you please remind us what the stakes are if your people can no longer depend on caribou and subsistence hunting. >> mr. alexander was part of the first panel. >> with that, i yield back. >> 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 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. >> mm-hm. did you ever consider that the same oil companies that funded your research would use your work as justification for drill ing 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 a 2004 paper. we used the alaska state department of 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. they wanted to get pre and post development data in some cases or in other cases just post development to look at the distribution of caribou. whether it was used to justify future drilling, it was always done with the intent of publishing in the peer reviewed scientific literature, which we did. and all the references i give in my written testimony are such. >> okay. the manuscript says it was developed with support from exxonmobil and bp exploration, is that right? >> depending which paper, sure. >> okay. 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. 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 an intact ecosystem with the full range of species. it's a national treasure in a lot of ways that many refer to as america ee's serengetti. i was there once 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, including critical habitat for the polar bear which is listed as threatened under the endangered species act and of course for the porcupine caribou that's essential, as we heard from the last panel, is essential to the people. as climate change continues to affect alaska, how important will pristine areas like the arctic refuge be to wildlife and to indigenous people? >> thank you, senator. i think we heard from the other panel that climate change is very real and very dramatic the further you move north, particularly on the north slope of alaska. and i think again 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, the coastal plain is for example a very finite calving area. the effects of climate change on that could be substantial. i think the answer, if there is one, is really we don't really know. 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. >> 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. you know, i think of john muir and his exploration of the glaziers glacier bay. 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. to me, i hold that dear but those are very important elements of the northwest economy. just because i represent the state of washington, i guarantee you patti murray and i don't get to decide what happens at mt. rainier. 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. as i said in my testimony when you look at the purposes in statute that establish the refuge that included wildlife and their natural diversity, references to wilderness, similarly the executive order establishing the range, the predecessor of the refuge in 1960 talks about those same sorts of values and outstanding resources. when you look at the 1987 report authorized by congress for the 1002 area, a very emphatic references to wilderness resources, to wildlife resources, those were also brought out in the more recent comprehensive conservation plan that was just completed for the refugee 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. they reiterated again those very important natural resources, particularly wildlife and wilderness that were really exemplified by the refuge. that recommendation, which it's interesting that deputy director sheehan did not mention -- >> a nice way to say about his testimony was he was very selective. we have sent a letter to the secretary. this should be clear. we should just get a yes or no answer from him about the purpose. you gave me one today and the answer is no. i think that's what any scientist would tell you. what i object to besides the sham process that we've been going through here to hurry this through with 51 votes is it ought to be clear. if people want to open the arctic refuge, just admit you're going to destroy the refuge. you can't denystacking the information that somehow that's not the case, because it is. you can decide you don't want the refuge. i disagree. i think it's one of the most unbelievable things we have on planet earth. it's that intact. what we're going to learn from it and continue to preserve from our heritage and past and the wildlife that is there is just unbelievable. people spend thousands of dollars to go to africa to look at this. did anybody in alaska ever think that in the near future as the arctic ice continues to melt that there wouldn't be people want to visit that? to me it's well worth pursuing. you can't have both. that's what scientists are going to tell us. people should just choose. they want to drill or they want to destroy -- 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 existed on our planet before. i agree with the people. that is spiritual and we should preserve it. >> we clearly disagree that this is an either/or proposition. it absolutely is not. for those of us who call alaska home to suggest that we would despoil 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 born down in the southeast. but i respect the views and opinions. 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 and wherever your home is, we want to be able to remain there. but you have to have the ability to stay there. and when you live in a cold place, you 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 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. and 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 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 are 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 anyone 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 producing, 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 to come to alaska. those cruise ships, people want to come to alaska. so if we have ignored our environment, that certainly isn't apparent. and so we do require the highest standards, i belie i believe in country, i believe in the world. 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 can you predict how many pads we're going to need? 40 years ago the pad in prudo was pretty significant and remains today. nobody is talking about building another prudo. because we believe even with prudo-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 is just in production now one month ago, but knowing that by 2020 what you will be able to access will be so much more than what you have put in place today. this is where the technology is taking us. we talk about the shale revolution here in the lower 48 and what that has done to allow us a level of energy independence that we never thought possible. it's not because that resource just materialized overnight in places where it wasn't. it was always there. we just use our smarts and our technology to allow us to access it better and more efficiently. that's what we're doing. that's what we're proving out in alaska. the senator challenged us all to look at prudo bay. it is up there. it is still a 65 acre pad. it is. but that's technology from 40 years ago. that's what it looked like 40 years ago. that's like telling you to stick with the same phone we were using 40 years ago and compare it to what we're using today. the statement was made that nothing has changed with the anwar debate. and i disagree so, so, so strongly with that. the technology has changed. our ability to access and understand the science and the data and the research that we know and the effort that we are making led by alaskans who care to not only protect the environment, but to protect the animals, the wildlife, the waterfo waterfowl. richard, your family has been up on the north slope for generations and on your mother's side for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. and i bet you still feel aw and wonderment when you see those caribou come through, thousands at a time. it is amazing. it is magical and it is spiritual. and our challenge, our challenge is to allow that to continue not only for the benefit of the caribou but for the people who live there. and i just feel like so much of this discussion has taken place in the absence of those who live there. and so i was actually going to ask more questions but i think we've probably taken as much time as was important to lay the record down here today. but i do hope that colleagues recognize this is not an effort to do some secret maneuver in a back room. if that were the case, we would not have had a public hearing for five hours, televised for all the world to see. if that were the case, we would not have an open markup like we will. none has been scheduled yet. and we will have an opportunity to weigh in as lawmakers on whether or not we should keep that commitment, the commitment that the governor and the lieutenant governor reminded us of, the commitment that when this 1002 area, when this area was specifically set aside for the opportunity to pursue exploration and development of our oil and gas potential, provided that certain conditions were met and that congress approves, well, we've gone through this battle many times as congressman young reminded us, 13 times, 12 times. and i believe, i believe that we are at that place that the lieutenant governor has reminded us, that we are at that place where we have met that balance in that our technology is allowing us to do things that were once just unimaginable. you couldn't even imagine being able to drill down here at the center of the capitol and reach an area out by the national harbor. this is not -- this is not drilling rhetoric, as has been suggested. this is not theoretical. this is actual application. we're making it happen. and i think that's what our colleagues need to appreciate and to recognize, is that change has happened for the better, allowing us to be able to be more responsible as we access our resources. but to do so in a way that allows not only for the jobs and opportunities for alaskans but to address the national security issues that senator sullivan has raised, to address the environmental concerns, to address our energy security needs. and to do so in a manner that allows us as the united states to lead, not only leading with access to a resource that we want, but leading in a way that allows for our innovation, our really pioneering in an area is recognized. so i thank those of you who have joined us. i want to acknowledge you, governor walker, for remaining through the duration of this hearing, and the lieutenant governor. i think making sure that this conversation is heard loud and heard clearly enables us as alaskans is speak with even greater voice and greater clarity. so i thank you for your time, and with that, ladies and gentlemen, we stand adjourned. coming up this afternoon, fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb will talk about fda programs live at the national press club. at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. and then former u.s. ambassador to china stapleton roy will talk about u.s. relations with china, the chinese communist party, and he'll give his thoughts on the president's trip to asia. live from the wilson center at 2:30 p.m. eastern on c-span2. you can follow both events online at c-span.org or by using the free c-span radio app. >> this weekend, c-span cities tour takes you to sioux falls, south dakota, and with the help of our cable partners, we'll highlight the history and littery life of sioux falls. saturday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on book tv, a look at the history of native american citizenship in the u.s. with an author and his book "broken landscape, indians, indian tribes, and the constitution." >> tribes have what is known as sovereignty. the authority from their preconstitutional existence as self-governing sovereigns. that's the position they're trying to take, that they're self-governing sovereigns within their territories. >> and wayne, author of the book "outlaw dakota" about judge shannon and frontier justice. >> if you were caught stealing a horse, for example, if you were particularly away from any settlement, you know, of ranch country, they would hang you. so that happened quite frequently. that was what you call frontier justice or rough justice. >> on sunday, at 2:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv, we'll tour ft. dakota to explore the story of the u.s. military's role in the west. >> the fort at sioux falls, it was called fort dakota, was really one of many forts established throughout the region. and it was really, i think, established to provide a sense of safety and security for those settlers here. >> and we'll also take a driving tour of sioux falls with historian john louk. >> we're on one of the main thoroughfares of sioux falls, south dakota. philips avenue. names for one of the first settlers of dakota territory, josiah philips. >> watch the tour of sioux falls, south dakota, saturday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on book tv, and sunday at 2:00 p.m. on american history tv on c-span3, the c-span cities tour, working with our cable partners as we explore america. here's been called one of the premier chroniclers of our age. best-selling author whose books have been adapted into three award-winning movies, michael lewis, will be our guest sunday on in depth. >> what almost all of the books have in common aside from a market angle is characters, interesting characters to me, in interesting situations. so the trick is that if you can attach the reader to the character at the beginning of the book, they'll follow that character anywhere. trust me that there is no one in america who would want to read my description of collateralized debt obligations, but once you