Native Alaska Town Backpeddling On Support For Drilling

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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 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."

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