ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Legal Newsline) - An Alaska state agency is appealing a federal court ruling that allows an oil company to keep its drilling information from the National Petroleum Reserve from competitors.
The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has that data collected by ConocoPhillips Alaska (CPAI), but the company sued to prevent its release. CPAI said the Naval Petroleum Reserve Protection Act of 1976 preempted an Alaska law mandating disclosure to the public.
Federal judge Sharon Gleason agreed in March and entered judgment for CPAI on June 26. The commission filed its notice of appeal on July 26 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
"CPAI, and other private oil and gas companies, would not have any NPR-A exploration information to submit to either the federal or state government but for their leases authorized by the NPRPA," Gleason wrote.
"It is not through the State of Alaska's authority that CPAI is exploring for oil and gas in the NPR-A, but through the federal government's authority."
Allowing disclosure sooner than required under federal law would disturb Congress' "particular balance of interests," she wrote.
"CPAI asserts that such a disclosure would diminish 'the value of the Well Data to CPAI... because CPAI would lose its competitive advantage as to other companies,'" Gleason wrote.
"The Court finds this argument persuasive because the early disclosure of Well Data by the State of Alaska would 'serve as a disincentive for CPAI to drill further wells in the NPR-A... (and) would inevitably create a scenario in which oil and gas exploration companies... wait out their competitors in the hopes that some other company would conduct exploration activities that could then be exploited.'"
CPAI sought to prevent the spread of corporate data collected while drilling wells in the reserve. AOGCC said it can release it after the wells are completed.
The reserve consists of close to 24 million acres on Alaska's North Slope and is the country's largest single unit of public land, the suit says. CPAI began exploring and drilling wells in response after legislation passed more than 30 years ago that included a confidentiality provision for any company that obtained a lease to drill, the suit says.