A group of former military leaders, including retired Coast Guard Adm. James Loy, has weighed in on the Alaska offshore drilling debate.

In a recent letter, the group urged the Obama administration to keep the two Arctic leasing areas in the final version of the federal government's new five-year oil and gas leasing program.

Among the three potential lease areas off the coast of Alaska, which are Cook Inlet and the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, the latter two represent the two Arctic leases.

"Excluding the Arctic from the Program would signal retreat, needlessly reducing U.S. flexibility for promoting our national interests and our ability to ensure international cooperation, including ensuring best practices in Arctic drilling, in this sensitive and increasingly strategic region," they wrote in the letter, submitted the day before public comment closed on the proposed 2017-22 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program.

Two former commanders of the Coast Guard's 17th District, located in Alaska, are among those who signed the letter.

In 2015, the Obama administration delayed all Arctic drilling for two years, and the vast majority of Arctic waters still are off-limits to drilling, per the administration.

Even after the program is finalized, the secretary of the interior will have "full discretion" to cancel a lease sale or to narrow the scope of a proposed leasing area, the letter says.

But no leasing areas can be added or expanded once the program is finalized.

Environmental reviews will be conducted before each lease sale.

"I'm in favor, as I think the signatories to our document are in favor, of not taking options away," Loy said by phone recently.

The intent of the letter, he said, is to convey to decision makers that a whole host of factors, including environmental and national security claims, should be weighed.

Loy, a 1964 Coast Guard Academy graduate and commandant of the Coast Guard from 1998 to 2002, is now a senior counselor with the Cohen Group, a business consulting firm based in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. is an Arctic nation because of Alaska, which was purchased from Russia in 1867. 

The U.S. currently is chairing the eight-country Arctic Council, established to promote cooperation and coordination among nations with Arctic territory, indigenous groups and other Arctic inhabitants.

Each nation chairs the council for a two-year period.

If the U.S. doesn't drill in the Arctic, someone else will, Loy said.

"One of the realities, I believe, is that somebody is going to be drilling in the Arctic, and the somebody, whether it's Russia or China, or whoever it might be, perhaps doesn't have the same kind of safety, security record attendant to their normal work as the United States does," he said.

Russia, in particular, has been investing heavily in the region, the letter says, citing its "world leading" 40 icebreakers, new Arctic bases, airfields, ports and "ambitious new energy development projects."

Additionally, its military has established an Arctic Strategic Command and conducted large-scale Arctic exercises, the letter says.

"Russia is very interested in moving its offshore energy industry as rapidly as possible because its economy is strongly dependent on resource extraction, particularly energy, oil and gas," said Rebecca Pincus with the Center for Arctic Study and Policy.

Headquartered at the Coast Guard Academy, the center serves as a think tank for the entire Coast Guard in procedural and policy matters relating to the Arctic.

"If you look globally, where are the last remaining untapped reserves of oil? It's in the Arctic. And if it's not us, it's going to be the Russians as soon as possible," Pincus said.

China also has been making investments such as "building new icebreakers, encouraging Chinese shipping companies to use Arctic sea routes, and making resource-oriented investments in Arctic countries," the letter points out.

In 2015, Royal Dutch Shell pulled out of the Arctic after spending around $7 billion on oil exploration, citing low oil prices.

"The drop in oil prices has cooled off some of the enthusiasm for our Arctic development that we were seeing in 2010, 2011, but that is a temporary situation," Pincus said.

With drilling comes the risk of a potential spill, and responding to such an incident in the Arctic, which offers many operational challenges, will undoubtedly be complicated.

It would be the Coast Guard's responsibility to respond to a spill in U.S. Arctic waters.

Pincus offered as comparison the response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Thousands and thousands of vessels were mobilized, and the coastal infrastructure that was involved — the warehouses and ports and facilities, and the hospitals, and the hotels where people stayed, and the grocery stores where they were fed — that's all lacking in northern Alaska," she said.

The Coast Guard has seasonal assets in Barrow, the biggest town in northern Alaska with a population of 4,384, according to the U.S. Census.

The service's permanent assets and infrastructure are in the southern part of the state.

"Getting the hundreds of people transported up there, getting boom and skimmers, assuming good conditions, that's going to take a while and then what do you do with the used boom? Where do you transport all that skimmed oil?" she said.

"There's a lot of logistical challenges that make oil spill response in the Arctic really complicated," she added.

The most talked about piece of infrastructure when it comes to the Coast Guard operating in the Arctic is an icebreaker.

Currently, the U.S. has two operational icebreakers, the same number as Estonia, the letter points out.

At one time, the U.S. had a fleet of eight icebreakers.

The Coast Guard is moving forward to design a new heavy icebreaker. But it will take about 10 years for the icebreaker to come online, officials have said.

"Icebreakers are fantastic, mobile emergency response platforms and especially for something like an oil spill, they're big ships that can sit offshore for days at a time," Pincus said.

"You can have hundreds of people on them, they can land helicopters," she said. "They can be floated to fuel depots. They can land booms and skimmers."

The Coast Guard Research and Development Center in New London has been doing work in the Arctic since 2011, according to Kurt Hansen, a project manager there.

Researchers have worked to develop equipment and techniques to detect, track and recover oil in ice-filled waters in all conditions.

Last winter, researchers tested an ice cage system, which Hansen described as an "ice cream cone that goes under a (oil) skimmer to move ice away from the skimmer."

They've also worked to develop a prototype for a temporary storage system for recovered oil, and a shower that would be situated off the deck of a vessel to decontaminate individuals so they don't track oil into the vessel.

j.bergman@theday.com