Credit: Kathy Kulez/FIT

The Interior Department is preparing to withdraw areas of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas from future oil and gas lease sales. Almost 10 million acres would be off-limits under the draft five-year plan that Interior released today.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski described the decision as a gut punch to Alaska’s economy. But Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the withdrawals aren't drastic. They include a section of the Beaufort Sea, a 25-mile buffer along the Chukchi coast and the area around the Hanna Shoal, northwest of Barrow.

For the most part, Jewell says those zones were already excluded under Interior's current offshore policy. 

"They already were deferred from oil and gas leasing," Jewell says. "And I don’t think anybody who looks at those maps would say that that is an unreasonable amount."

Some leasing had been allowed in Hanna Shoal. It's home to a diverse range of fish species and marine mammals -- and it's one of the regions that stakeholders wanted to stay out of future lease sales.

As it stands, no one has tried to explore those prospects. Shell is the only operator close to developing its Chukchi leases. And they're working outside the zone that's excluded in the new plan.

"There’s nothing that we’re announcing today that impacts Shell’s plans," Jewell says. "They have valid existing leases. We’ve been working very, very closely with them to support the activities that they want to do up there but to make sure that they're done in a safe -- and environmentally safe -- way."

In a statement, Shell spokesperson Megan Baldino says the company is focused on exploring its existing leases in the Chukchi.

But Shell hasn’t announced whether it will restart those efforts this summer. The company's already spent more than $6 billion and asked for extensions on some of its leases. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement hasn't decided to whether to grant that request.

Shell's leases are set to expire starting in 2017.