WILDLIFE UNIT PROPOSES ALASKA REFUGE OIL STUDY

  The National Wildlife Federation 
  rejected an Interior Department draft plan to open wilderness
  lands in Northern Alaska to oil and gas exploration.
      The federation, the nation's largest conservation group,
  said further study was needed to assess any possible damage
  that development might have on the wildlife in the area, the
  coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
      Jay Hair, the federation's executive vice president, called
  the Interior's research into the effects of development "so
  fundamentally flawed that it provides little or no basis on
  which to make a public policy decision."
      Hair called the department's proposal a "reflection of a
  largely political decision," adding "we have no confidence in
  Interior to represent the broad public interest in this area."
      Interior wants to open the 1.5 million acre coastal plain
  to oil and gas exploration, but it said only with tough 
  safeguards to protect the area's caribou and musk-oxen.
      It said a preliminary survey showed the region could hold
  billions of barrels of oil and gas, and that its potential as
  an energy resource would never be known without exploration.
      Interior said oil on the coastal plain could match the 10
  billion barrels found at Prudhoe Bay, just west of the plain.
      Under existing law, Congress must agree to oil and gas
  exploration, and if it does not act, the land will remain a
  wildlife refuge protected from commercial development.
      Hair said Interior's report failed to stress the
  probability that finding recoverable oil is only 19 pct.
      He said Interior's study also failed to weigh oil, gas,
  fish and wildlife information the State of Alaska had gathered
  nor had the department consulted the Environmental Protection
  Agency on the possible effects of exploration.
      The federation, in letters to Congressmen, proposed that a
  nine-member commission be set up to study all aspects of the
  issue and report back to Congress in about two years.
      Hair said the federation was not opposed to the possible
  exploration of oil, only that Interior's study was inadquate to
  make a sound judgement.
      Congressional observers said that at present there was
  little sentiment in Congress to open the wildlife area for
  commercial exploitation dispite increasing concern that the
  United States is becoming overly dependent on foreign oil.
  

