The protection of the marine and coastal environment is mandated by the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Lands Act of 1953, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, and the OCS Lands Act Amendments of 1978. An essential responsibility of the Department of the Interior (DOI), as manager of the OCS Leasing Program, is to ensure that proposed OCS development and production activities will not irreparably damage the marine environment and its resources.   To help meet this responsibility as it applies to development of the Alaska OCS, the Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment Program (OCSEAP) was initiated by interagency agreement between DOI’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM, later Minerals Management Service, MMS, and still later, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, BOEM) and the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The ARLIS OCSEAP website provides access to a compilation of publications and reports that have resulted from research funded by OCSEAP since its inception in 1975.   It was derived by Alaska Resources Library and Information Services (ARLIS) staff from OCSEAP Comprehensive Bibliography, published June 1990.