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Itta: Sounds good, but is it too good?
Mayor Edward Itta, mayor of the North Slope Borough, said March 9 that he likes the sound of the new Shell-commissioned evaluation of the potential economic benefits of oil and gas development on Alaska’s outer continental shelf. But the mayor also questioned whether the report paints too bright a view of a future in which OCS hydrocarbon resources might provide major numbers of jobs and significant new income for the state.
“With state revenues and the national economy in such tough shape, it sounds like music to our ears,” Itta said. “I don’t want to rain on Shell’s parade, but this report paints a picture that is so rosy it’s hard to believe.”
Alaskans, battered by a downward slide in oil revenues and job losses in the oil industry, will welcome any good news about the future. But although the analysts from Northern Economics and the Institute of Social and Economic Research who carried out the study say that they used information from the U.S. Minerals Management Service as a prime source of data, the estimates contained in the study report vary “dramatically” from the MMS data, Itta said.
Need to be realistic In addition, recent experience of oil price fluctuations suggests that “50-year projections are as much about guesswork as they are about science,” Itta said. It is important to be wary of setting unrealistic expectations about the future, he said.
Itta added that the North Slope Borough does support oil and gas development.
“I will continue to work with the state and the industry on development issues,” Itta said. “In particular, I look forward to working with Shell to make sure that, along with economic benefits, social and cultural impacts are analyzed closely, too.”
—Alan Bailey
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