Eskimo villagers' pro-drilling stance wavering

ANCHORAGE - An Eskimo village on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's coastal plain has long supported oil drilling there, but some residents are now opposing the controversial drilling plan embraced by President George W. Bush and most Alaska politicians.

Many residents of the Inupiat Eskimo village of Kaktovik, the only settlement in the refuge's coastal area, are rethinking their support because of potential threats to migrating whales and other sea life from offshore drilling activity in the Beaufort Sea, said Stephen Haycox, a professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

The emerging Kaktovik dissent is "a major crack in what has been so far a pretty solid front" in favor of drilling, Haycox said, "I think it's highly significant and I think it's going to weaken the ANWR-drill advocates in Congress."

Robert Thompson, a local tour operator who organized a petition drive opposing refuge development, said that offshore drilling in the remote, ice-bound Beaufort is feasible only if it is linked to some onshore oil-field infrastructure.

Thompson's petition gained 57 signatures, a large number for a village of 284. "The last election, 98 people voted, so presumably if there were an election, 57 people could conceivably be a majority," he said.

Oddly enough, the villagers' support is wavering in part because of Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski's ardent advocacy of offshore drilling.

The Republican governor ended some no-leasing restrictions placed on certain Beaufort Sea sites considered important to Inupiat whalers. He celebrated a March 30 federal lease sale, in which oil companies bid $46.7 million for rights to explore the Beaufort Sea, including in areas directly offshore of Kaktovik and the Arctic refuge.

If Kaktovik residents oppose ANWR development, they do so despite their own financial interests. Villagers are shareholders in corporations that own surface and mineral rights to about 92,000 acres (37,200 hectares) on the coastal plain.

Inupiat Eskimos from across the North Slope have cited the potential economic boon from oil production as justification for ANWR drilling support.

Political leaders in Kaktovik have said they would only support drilling as long as it did not threaten their livelihood.

"We can support development of the (coastal plain), provided it is done with certain conditions met, conditions that assure we are empowered by law to protect our interests, including our access to those lands and waters on which we depend," the mayor and city council said in an April 19 letter to Alaska's Congressional delegation.

- REUTERS