Pourchot named Alaska special assistant

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has named Pat Pourchot to be his special assistant for Alaska affairs, based in Anchorage.

Interior said Pourchot will work closely with Interior’s senior management in Alaska, the department’s major Alaska constituents and the secretary’s D.C.-based director of Alaska affairs, Kim Elton.

Most recently Pourchot has been with the Audubon Society, but he began his career with the Department of the Interior as an outdoor recreation planner and was working with the Bureau of Land Management on environmental issues associated with moving Alaska oil to U.S. markets when he left the department to work on Capitol Hill, where he helped to fashion the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

Pourchot worked as a land manager for the Alaska Federation of Natives and as a resource manager for one of the Alaska Native regional corporations in the 1980s.

He was elected to the Alaska House and Senate, and served as executive director for Commonwealth North after leaving the Legislature.

He was legislative director and then commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources for Gov. Tony Knowles.

Since 2005, Pourchot has been working with nonprofits.

—Petroleum News