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Jerry Hood tapped to head Arctic Power in D.C. Buckley reverses; Stevens fires latest pro-ANWR salvo in war of rhetoric Rose Ragsdale Petroleum News Contributing Writer
Arctic Power, the lead research and advocacy group that promotes opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, is poised to add new muscle to its lobbying effort in Washington, D.C.
Former Alaska labor leader Jerry Hood said he will head the Alaska-based organization’s push for energy development on ANWR’s coastal plain in Congress this spring.
“I’m in discussions with Arctic Power now to coordinate their efforts in D.C.,” Hood said Feb. 15.
He said the organization will focus on supporting the Alaska delegation in Washington as well as ANWR’s other chief proponents: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., House Resources Chairman Richard W. Pombo, R-Calif., and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, in their efforts to open ANWR’s coastal plain to drilling.
Al Adams, co-chairman of Arctic Power’s board of directors, said Feb 16 that the advocacy group wants Hood to provide overall continuity of effort between Arctic Power, Alaska’s congressional delegation, the Murkowski administration and the people of Alaska in the drive to get Congress to approve opening ANWR to oil development.
Though pro-ANWR forces picked up more votes in Congress during the November election, winning an oil drilling provision presents a tough challenge, Hood said.
“Some people believe this will be a ‘slam dunk,’” said Hood, “but nothing could be farther from the truth. We will need all the help we can get.” Hood wants mentor Herrera back in D.C. Toward that end, Hood said he is hopeful that Roger Herrera, Arctic Power’s top D.C. lobbyist in prior years will rejoin the “team” this year.
“Roger has been out of the country taking a well-deserved trip with his wife,” said Hood, who described the oil-industry-executive-turned-consultant as an “admired and respected mentor.”
“He’s worked longer than anyone at this, and I’m hopeful he will be back with us.”
Herrera, who is on vacation for two months, was unavailable for comment at press time. He is expected to return to the United States at the end of February.
Adams said the entire Arctic Power board of directors wants Herrera to return to his job as a D.C. lobbyist for the organization.
“If he comes back, he will work on some of the (pro-ANWR) strategies, particularly on the House side,” he said. “Arctic Power works as a team back here, and we want Roger on the team.” Arctic Power opens larger D.C. office Arctic Power, meanwhile, is moving to a larger D.C. office at Third and Pennsylvania avenues, two blocks from the Capitol.
Hood said Arctic Power has been very successful in gaining support for oil development on ANWR’s coastal plain. He said the small Alaska-based organization has done a good job of countering — with the truth — lavish ($20 million-a-year) and misleading anti-drilling campaigns by environmental groups. He cited Congress’ approval of an ANWR drilling provision in 1995 that President Clinton vetoed as an example.
But the time has come, he said, for Arctic Power to take a new direction and allow Alaska’s congressional delegation and other congressional proponents to lead the pro-ANWR effort.
Hood said Arctic Power will no longer broadcast strategy in news conferences, a practice that at times enabled anti-drilling forces to counter the group’s moves. Instead, Arctic Power will leave strategy discussions to the lawmakers whose business it is to direct and disseminate them, he said.
Rather than a move to be secretive as some media reports have suggested, Hood told Petroleum News that he aims to reinforce Arctic Power’s traditional role of supporting the Alaska delegation by providing research and educating the public on why we need to get into ANWR.
“We’re a supportive entity, and we’re all striving for the same goal,” he said. Group will focus on Congress Arctic Power also will use its limited resources to counter ANWR opponents when their moves might sway Congress, rather than refuting the barrage of anti-drilling propaganda with which environmental groups have blanketed the country in recent days.
“It’s great fun to counter the opposition’s arguments with factual information, but we are going to concentrate on what’s going to move a (congressional) vote in our direction,” Hood said.
The former president of the Teamsters Union in Alaska retired in January 2004 after years of taking a lead role in promoting ANWR drilling among labor groups, especially through his close ties with the national Teamsters organization. Hood opened a lobbying and consulting firm in Washington, D.C., last year that represents such clients as Alaska Interstate Construction, the Alaska Teamster Employer Pension Trust, Totem Ocean Trailer Express and VECO Corp.
Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski announced Hood’s appointment after testifying Feb. 10 in support of oil development in ANWR before a House subcommittee working on a national energy bill. Officially representing the National Governors Association as chairman of its natural resources committee, Murkowski told the subcommittee that the nation needs more conservation, more alternative energy and more traditional fossil fuels in general.
Murkowski, a U.S. senator from 1981 to 2002, also put in a plug for Alaska, saying, “We have waited patiently for Congress to address development of ANWR and would encourage that the energy bill include ANWR because there is no question in our mind, based on our experience in the Prudhoe Bay area, that the area can be opened safely.”
Murkowski told reporters later in the day that he felt there was a need for reorganization at the partly state-funded Arctic Power. While he did not ask for an appropriation for Arctic Power in his budget proposal last year, Murkowski included $500,000 for “ANWR purposes” in his supplemental budget request to the Alaska Legislature this session. Most of the money will go to Arctic Power, a Murkowski spokeswoman confirmed Feb. 16.
Despite an apparent seal of approval from Murkowski, Hood said he will answer to Arctic Power’s leadership.
“I’m sure the governor let it be known that he supported my appointment, but Arctic Power is hiring me,” he said.
Hood, a Republican, made a short list of candidates in 2002 who vied for Murkowski’s U.S. Senate seat when he was elected governor. That seat is now held by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the governor’s daughter. Stevens touts environmentalist’s change of heart Alaska senior Sen. Ted Stevens wrote Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Feb. 7 and shared the contents of a letter he received recently from Judge James L. Buckley, an environmental activist and former U.S. senator from New York in the 1970s.
Buckley was the lead signatory on full page ads opposing oil drilling on ANWR’s coastal plain that appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post in 1979 at the height of the congressional debate when Congress established the wilderness refuge.
In a Jan. 24, 2005, letter, Buckley told Stevens that he has changed his mind and believes oil drilling on ANWR’s coastal plain would do no significant damage to Arctic wildlife and none that wouldn’t be rapidly repaired once operations ceased.
Noting that ANWR, at 19.6 million acres, is the size of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire combined, Buckley said “it is simply preposterous to claim that oil development in the (1.5 million-acre) Study Area would ‘destroy’ the critical values that ANWR is intended to serve.”
“In light of the above, it is economic and (to a much lesser degree) strategic masochism to deny ourselves access to what could prove our largest source of a vital resource,” he said. “Having visited the arctic nine times in the past 13 years (including a recent trip to Alaska’s North Slope) I don’t think I can be accused of being insensitive to the charms of the ‘Arctic qua Arctic.’ I just don’t see the threat to values I cherish.”
Stevens also criticized a letter sent last month to members of the House of Representatives by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., as being a “gross mischaracterization of the intent and history of ANWR.”
Markey and Johnson said ANWR was set aside by Congress specifically for preserving wildlife for future generations.
Not true, said Stevens, citing his personal work on the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, which he said set aside 104 million acres in the “national interest,” including much of ANWR. The act also included an amendment authored by Sens. Paul Tsongas and Henry “Scoop” Jackson to set aside the refuge’s 100-mile wide coastal plain for oil and gas exploration in ANWR, he said.
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