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Ted Stevens: Time to divvy up OCS Alaska’s senior U.S. senator, governor want state to get share of outer continental shelf oil and gas royalties Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The State of Alaska should share in royalties from outer continental shelf production on its borders, says U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, predicting that such sharing will take place as a condition of OCS production off Alaska.
The senator, in Juneau to give his annual update to the Legislature, told members of the press Feb. 19 that the bill passed in 2006 which allocated OCS monies to Gulf of Mexico states originally included Alaska.
“We had a provision in the bill as it went through and it was the people opposed to ANWR who took that out of there. They thought it was an incentive to drill in Alaska and would not let us enact it.”
Stevens said North Slope residents oppose drilling “until they get a percentage of it — that’s what we’re facing right now.”
Both the state and federal governments “have to wake up,” Stevens said.
People on the North Slope are not going to put up with oil and gas drilling and the risk to their resources from a spill. “I don’t think it’s a great risk,” Stevens said, but calling it a “potential risk to their resources.”
Alaska is not included in OCS offshore royalty sharing, he said, “because of the opposition of the extreme environmental people.”
Alaska has two-thirds of the outer continental shelf “and we don’t get any money from any production that comes from the outer continental shelf.”
“I predict there’s not going to be any production until we get it. Both the state and the Native people oppose any real production until we get the same kind of share that others get from production off our shore,” Stevens said.
Governor: time Alaska starts promoting OCS share Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin agreed with Stevens on OCS royalty share.
“It’s going to become much brighter on everyone’s radar screen, I think, once Alaskans realize that these other coastal states do receive OCS revenue shares. Alaska doesn’t; we’re exempt from that,” the governor told reporters Feb. 21.
She said she would like to see that changed and thinks it’s time Alaska started pushing for that change, and anticipates that the state’s congressional delegation would support that move.
Stevens helped the Gulf of Mexico states get a share of OCS royalties, Palin said, adding that she hopes delegations from those states would, in return, assist Alaska in getting royalties off its shores.
Alaska’s share $21.7 million Alaska does earn royalties from production from federal lands onshore and from offshore lands adjacent to state waters.
Alaska was one of 34 states which earned a share of almost $2 billion during fiscal year 2007 as part of federal revenues collected by the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service, MMS said late last year.
Alaska’s share, $21.7 million, represents its share of revenues collected from oil, gas and coal production.
MMS said for the majority of onshore federal lands, states receive 50 percent of the revenues while the other 50 percent goes to various funds of the U.S. Treasury, including the Reclamation Fund for water projects. Alaska receives a 90 percent share of revenues from onshore production as prescribed in the Alaska Statehood Act.
“In addition, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi with producing federal offshore tracts adjacent to state waters receive 27 percent of those mineral royalties,” while remaining offshore revenues MMS collects go into various accounts of the U.S. Treasury, the majority into the general fund.
U.S. coastal waters are divided into three zones: from zero to three miles is state waters; in federal waters from three to six miles from shore, states get a 27 percent cut of royalties from production; there is no state cut beyond six miles, except for those Gulf Coast states receiving OCS royalties as a result of the 2006 federal legislation.
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