I wasn't talking about buying up leases nobody wants. I was...

I wasn't talking about buying up leases nobody wants. I was talking about access to export, i.e. capacity in the pipeline. Do you thing that CoP, now they have swapped assets with BP, will be so eager to let a small player have first, second or third access to capacity when they have just spent a net billion or so exploring the North Slope and swapped Claire equity for BP's Alaskan acreage? Or for that matter Exxon, eni and Repsol? When the head of the state's O&G division is an ex Arco (read CoP) employee of thirty years?

Also, as per the water issue, you either pond it (and it freezes and the linings crack and needs expensive "looking after" or you truck it out, where it needs prohibitively expensive and only seasonal transport). Re-injecting into a depleted conventional reservoir can't be done in Alaska if that's what they're thinking of. Happy for you to do a fly-over of the Bakken or the Permian and count the ponds and tell me you can see the Alaskan wilderness being allowed to look the same. Water will need more than your average chemicals to keep it from freezing, so you can't dispose of it easily and cheaply whichever way you go.
Also, none of this can be done seasonally. Anyone with half a brain and experience in the industry will tell you not to constrain unconventional wells once you've stimulated them. So what will the company do when access is limited to a few months of the year?

And for the record, I much prefer 88E's conventional potential. The margins they'll make on anything they produce from non-shale reservoirs may actually mean they can compete for pipeline capacity once aggregated as per Alyeska PTA.