Kevin Banks has been appointed acting director of the Department of Natural Resource’s Division of Oil and Gas, replacing acting director Bill Van Dyke.
Van Dyke, who was appointed by the former administration after Mark Myers resigned in late 2005, will stay with the division in a petroleum engineer’s slot.
Banks, formerly a chief of the division’s commercial evaluation section, said his and other appointments in the division are all acting positions because the new commissioner of DNR, Marty Rutherford, elected to be acting commissioner.
Kurt Gibson, who accompanied newly elected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Rutherford in North Slope gas pipeline meetings this past week, has been named the new deputy director of the Division of Oil and Gas.
Gibson, who previously worked under Banks as a petroleum investments manager, replaces Pirtle Bates, who resigned and will not be staying with the division.
According to Petroleum News sources Bruce Anders, formerly with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, has been selected to take Patrick Galvin’s place as chief of the division’s permitting and leasing section. But that information was not confirmed by anyone in the Palin administration, including Banks.
Galvin has been appointed commissioner of the Alaska Department of Revenue by Palin.
The Anchorage Daily News reported today that Ken Griffin, who was appointed acting deputy commissioner of DNR by former Gov. Frank Murkowski after Rutherford resigned as deputy commissioner in late 2005, has left DNR.
Rutherford told the Anchorage Daily News that Griffin was a strong proponent of Murkowski’s proposed gas pipeline fiscal contract between the state and the three major North Slope oil producers, BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil.
