utilize Superior Oil Company and Union Oil Company surface retort facilities fed with shale mined from room-and-pillar operations beneath both tracts.

Streamlining of Operating Regulations

One of the basic policies of President Reagan's administration is the reform of the Federal regulatory process, including elimination of excessive and outdated regulations. On February 17,

1981, President Reagan signed Executive Order 12291, thereby beginning the process of identifying unnecessary regulations and streamlining other requirements relating to mineral resources management.

As the major regulatory arm of the U.S. Geological Survey, the Conservation Division inherited the bulk of the requirements for streamlining these rules and regulations. Shortly after Executive Order 12291 was signed, all units of the Division began intensive reviews of their regulations and preparation of lists of rules that could be eliminated.

The most significant onshore streamlining actions were those revising and updating of the

Coal Mining Operating Regulations and the Onshore Oil and Gas Operating Regulations. In addition, the rules governing the formation of unit agreements involving Federal oil and gas leases are being updated to bring them into line with current practices. Regulations implementing the Connally Act of 1935 and those dealing with acquisition and leasing of water wells have not been utilized for many years and are being eliminated as part of the streamlining effort.

Initial priorities of the Outer Continental Shelf regulatory streamlining effort include the following changes to:

• Exempt the areas of the western Gulf of Mexico where considerable exploration and production already has occurred from the requirement that Outer Continental Shelf operators submit development and production plans.

• Provide for reimbursement to lessees and permittees for certain costs of reproducing geological and geophysical data.

• Eliminate redundancy in environmental reporting.

• Eliminate the requirement for segregating the portion of a lease that has been unitized from the portion of the lease outside the

unit.

Delete the requirement to immediately notify the Director of the Survey of the repeated analysis or interpretation of geological or geophysical data.

• Change the deadline for completion of deep stratigraphic test wells and submission of the resulting information from approximately 8 to 2 months prior to the date of a scheduled Outer Continental Shelf lease sale.

• Provide for the granting of a suspension of operations and extension of the lease period as a result of inordinate delays in the issuance of postsale permits and consents from various environmental entities.

The Geological Survey is endeavoring to streamline regulations governing reporting requirements, retaining only those truly necessary ones, and identifying the least costly alternative for each of its other rules. When the streamlining effort is completed in early 1982, the applicable regulatory codes will be current and free of unnecessary provisions. The Geological Survey will continue to review its regulations and rules to eliminate excessive, burdensome, and counterproductive requirements; to eliminate redtape and redundancy; and to minimize cost to industry and the Government. As a result of streamlining, lessees and operators who develop various

mineral resources and Federal and Indian leases can be assured that only necessary requirements control their operations.

Outer Continental
Shelf Oil and Gas

The Geological Survey conducted a variety of activities in support of the Department's Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas leasing program. These activities included tract selection analyses and recommendations for four future lease sales and resource evaluations on 1,227 tracts involving seven sales. In the course of these activities, over 100,000 line miles of high-resolution and common-depth geophysical data were acquired and analyzed.

The Survey's Outer Continental Shelf regulatory workload also increased with the expansion of exploratory and production activities by lessees on approximately 2,400 Outer Continental Shelf leases in effect at the end of fiscal year 1981, an increase of 5 percent over the preceding fiscal year. These leases produced 8.5 percent of the Nation's oil and 23.75 percent of the gas in fiscal year 1981. A total of approximately 1,112 new exploratory and development wells were started, and approximately 8,400 inspections were conducted on both a scheduled basis and "random" unannounced basis. Gross royalties of $3.1 billion and net royalties of $2.6 billion are projected to be collected from Outer Continental Shelf production.

Exploration activities included a first for the Outer Continental Shelf areas of Alaska- the construction of a gravel-island drilling site approximately 15 miles northeast of Prudhoe Bay on Beaufort Sea Lease Y-0191. Exxon Corporation, the designated operator for the project, began its 24-hour-per-day construction effort on March 1, 1981. This demanding work schedule enabled construction activities to be completed before the spring breakup hindered transportation on the ice haul road between the construction site and the shore.

The gravel island was laid down on the sea floor in about 18 feet of water, using nearly 350,000 cubic yards of gravel hauled from a State of Alaska open pit located 15 miles from the site. On a good day, trucks could log up to 13,000 truck-miles and could haul as many as 400 loads. Large ice blocks, dubbed "Alaskan ice cubes" by onsite personnel, were sawed out of the ice and removed from the site. Each block measured approximately 5 feet X 5 feet X 8 feet and weighed 2 to 6 tons. Gravel was poured into the resulting holes until the entire area of the pad

was gravel filled. The completed pad surface rises about 13.5 feet above the mean higher high water level and measures about 500 feet in diameter.

Despite several arctic storms that halted work, the island was completed on April 9, 1981. A 5-foot berm built around the perimeter of the pad surface increased the height of the island to 18.5 feet above the water line. A stockpile of 35,000 cubic yards of gravel will provide for sandbagging, for reinforcing operations, and for filling any slump areas. Several kinds of instruments have been installed in the island to monitor temperature, displacement, and settlement. Survey personnel have provided onsite monitoring throughout construction operations and will continue to monitor the island during the exploration phase.

During fiscal year 1981, two lease sales, covering areas in the eastern Gulf of Alaska, were held. On October 21, 1980, Federal Lease Sale 55 was held and resulted in the leasing of 37 federally managed tracts covering 213,120 acres. Reoffering Sale 1, which offered 175 tracts passed over in Sale 55, which included two tracts on which bids were rejected, was held June 30, 1981. Only five tracts received bids. The disappointing sale reflects a general lack of interest in reoffered tracts.

On December 18, 1979, in Providence, Rhode Island, 116 tracts over the Georges Bank were offered for lease under Lease Sale No. 42, the first in the North Atlantic leasing area. As a result of that sale, 63 leases were issued covering 358,671 acres, receiving a total high bonus bid of more than $816 million. Litigation against the sale was settled out of court in December 1980.

The Survey established a District Office in Hyannis, Massachusetts, in early 1980 to oversee operations conducted in the Georges Bank area. Exploration plans were filed by Exxon Corporation and Shell Oil Company on December 2, 1980, on Blocks 133 and 410, respectively. The Exxon plan was approved on January 15, 1981, and the Shell plan, after revision, on March 11, 1981. An Application for Permit to Drill was filed by Exxon on January 12, 1981, and by Shell on May 11, 1981. After receipt of concurrence by all affected States, both applications were approved on June 29, 1981.

On July 24, 1981, Exxon began drilling the first well in the North Atlantic area on Block 133 using the semisubmersible drilling rig "Alaskan Star." The well was permitted to a depth of 15,300 feet. On that same date, Shell began the second well in the area on Block 410 using the semisubmersible drilling rig "Saratoga."

The manual procedure to generate these maps for Outer Continental Shelf lease sales is a very cumbersome and repetitive process, requiring many hours of preparation by Geological Survey scientists. Current plans are to increase the size and frequency of Outer Continental Shelf sales which will require the production of many more maps. To speed up the process involved in generating these maps, computerized graphic systems have been developed to assist the scientist by providing the needed base maps and by greatly reducing the numerous manual processing operations leading to the final interpretive map prod

ucts.

Seismic and geologic data are stored in computer-readable form on tapes and disks. The ability of the computer to generate maps quickly and accurately and to modify and retrieve data easily provides the scientists with an important tool to speed up the map-making process.

Currently, the maps are generated by computers located in Reston, Virginia, and Menlo Park, California. To develop interactive mapping capabilities, efforts are now under way to install complete stand-alone mapping systems on minicomputers in the Outer Continental Shelf region where the lease-sale activities actually occur. These mapping systems will result in even faster generation of computerized maps and will lead to more efficient implementation of Survey programs.

Automation of
Geophysical Mapping

The Geological Survey conducts a variety of
activities in support of the Department of the In-
terior's Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas leas-
ing program, including geohazards analysis and
resource evaluations for Outer Continental Shelf
lease tracts. In the course of these activities, the
Survey acquires and analyzes available geo-
phy sical and geological data and information
collected by industry and government.

The process used to analyze these data first requires the drafting of base maps to show geophy sical line locations and geological sample and well locations. When these base maps have been completed, the geophysical and geological data and information are analyzed by geoscientists in a time-consuming manual process that generates subsurface maps of specific geological horizons; that is, the geology at particular depths. Preliminary maps display seismic energy penetra