A lease sale in the US Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could come as early as July 2019, 

according to a top Interior Department official. 

The "scoping" process for an environmental impact statement for ANWR is now underway 

and will be completed in June, Joe Balash, assistant interior secretary for lands and miner

als, told reporters in a briefing. 

The draft EIS is expected in early 2019 followed by the final document in late April, Balash 

said. "We will hold the lease sale when the EIS is completed." 

Balash was in Alaska to attend scoping meetings held in several communities including in 

Anchorage on Wednesday. 

"We will definitely have a lease sale " because it is required by Congress in the Tax and Jo

bs Act of 2017, he said. "The law said 'we shall' have the sales. 

"The purpose of the EIS is to inform the public and federal agencies on the impacts," Balash 

said. "In the scoping, we are asking people for advice on what kinds of impacts we should loo

k for." 

Interior is required to hold two lease sales of not less than 400,000 acres each in a 1.6 million

-acre section of coastal plain in the refuge. 

One  of  the  problems  Interior is wrestling with is how to deal with a limit of 2,000 acres of 

surface disturbance for development of any discoveries, Balash said. The limit is also in the 

federal tax act that authorized the leasing. 

"We have to craft a way to deal with this in the lease sale " in how the limits on surface use

will be allocated across tracts that will be offered, Balash said. "We have not yet determined

 a way to do it." 

North Slope field developers have been able to minimize surface impacts using techniques

like horizontal drilling but the acres used for drill pads, roads and other surface facilities co

uld quickly add up depending on the areal extent of the underground reservoir. 

Meanwhile, Interior officials are working on what kinds of lease stipulations would be applied

in the sale. Balash said the stipulations used in leasing in the National Petroleum Reserve-

Alaska  on  the  western  North  Slope  provides  a  model  but  there  could  also be special 

conditions in the Arctic refuge.