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Murkowski slams Obama administration Says that new legislation and federal regulations show that government sees Alaska natural resource development as a problem Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in a speech to the World Trade Center Alaska on Aug. 17, blasted the federal government for what she characterized as overreach in applying legislation and regulations that limit Alaska’s ability to develop its natural resources.
Reflecting on the tragic passing of former Sen. Ted Stevens, Murkowski said that resource development had been one of the central pillars of Stevens’ vision of Alaska’s future.
“He understood, perhaps better than anyone else, that our ability to develop a ‘climate for investment’ starts and ends with our ability to develop our natural resources,” Murkowski said in remarks prepared for her speech. “This (resource) abundance accounts for a huge share of the jobs in our state, and the vast majority of revenues for our state government.”
Off limits But the cumulative effect of new rules and regulations from government agencies, and new legislation working its way through Congress, are placing more and more Alaska resources off limits, she said, citing examples such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s re-opening of a challenge to a permit for the Kensington gold mine in Southeast Alaska, after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the validity of the permit.
In terms of the oil industry, an administrative decision to declare the Colville River as an “aquatic resource of national importance” and to subsequently prohibit the construction of a river bridge has thrown great uncertainty over the possibility of developing new oil resources in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, Murkowski said. Murkowski also expressed strong concern that a recently announced intent by the U.S. Department of the Interior to develop a new NPR-A management plan could signal more areas of the reserve being excluded from oil development.
“If a company can’t explore for oil in a national petroleum reserve during this administration, even after paying huge amounts of money for leases and spending years to work through the development process, then we can’t honestly expect a rational approach to any oil and gas development,” Murkowski said.
And Murkowski accused the administration of having a hidden agenda to restrict access to NPR-A in order to prevent the eventual construction of a pipeline from the Chukchi Sea across to the central North Slope, thereby throttling the possibility of development in a new high-potential Chukchi Sea oil province.
Drilling moratorium Murkowski proceeded to accuse the administration of stifling Chukchi Sea development by imposing an Arctic outer continental shelf drilling moratorium in response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
“Not wanting to let a crisis go to waste, the administration has also used the Deepwater Horizon tragedy to justify something else it wanted to do: cancel exploratory drilling 5,000 miles away, and in only 150 feet of water, in the very shallow seas off Alaska’s north coast,” Murkowski said.
In fact, the president has been giving speeches about the depletion of U.S. onshore and shallow-water oil fields while also taking two of the country’s most promising oil provinces — the Chukchi Sea and NPR-A — off the table, Murkowski said.
And rather than considering compromise options for the development of oil from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 1002 area, the administration and Congress are setting the stage for designating the 1002 area as permanent wilderness, she said. A compromise proposal involving directional drilling into refuge resources from land outside the refuge met with “knee-jerk opposition,” she said.
45 billion barrels Taken together, the Chukchi Sea, NPR-A and the ANWR 1002 area could hold 45 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, enough oil to cut U.S. oil imports by half over the next 20 years, Murkowski said.
“The next time you hear someone say that the United States has 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves but consumes 20 percent of its production, remember that Alaska’s resources are purposely being left out of that calculation,” Murkowski said.
It is also critically important to develop enough new Arctic Alaska oil resources to keep the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in operation, to prevent the future stranding of Arctic oil.
“If we continue to let the supply in this line diminish, operational issues will crop up within a decade and it could be shut down entirely,” Murkowski said.
It is necessary to reverse the course that the administration has set for Alaska because resource development is the principal driver of Alaska’s growth and prosperity, Murkowski re-iterated.
“We can use our resources to create prosperity and develop a strong economy while still protecting our lands, our heritage, our wildlife and our environment. We can build that climate for investment,” Murkowski said.
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