Bush Offers to Shrink Alaska Oil Drilling Plan

(Bloomberg) — The Bush administration, bowing to pressure from environmental groups, has offered to scale back a plan to expand oil and natural gas drilling on Alaska’s North Slope.

The U.S. Interior Department yesterday asked a court in Anchorage to allow the planned Sept. 27 sale of about 8 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve to go forward, minus about 400,000 acres around Teshekpuk Lake, an area environmental groups consider a critical Arctic wildlife habitat.
Bloomberg