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Parnell: ESA for species Governor tells RDC ESA not land-use planning tool; budgets for ESA attorney Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell gave a clear indication of focus resource issues for his administration when he opened the Resource Development Council’s 30th annual conference in Anchorage Nov. 18.
The governor pledged to focus on “positioning Alaska’s economy for growth and our people for opportunity,” and said while oil has fueled the state’s economy, throughput in the trans-Alaska oil pipeline is on the decline.
“As we continue our quest for renewable resources, our job is to keep the oil flowing” through the pipeline, he said, noting that while Liberty and Point Thomson would contribute to that flow, the outer continental shelf has the most potential.
But, he said, while companies have put years of work and billions of dollars into OCS development, there is opposition to that development.
“We’re pushing against political forces … that seem to want to stop resource development in Alaska altogether,” Parnell said.
He pointed to the polar bear as an example.
Parnell said when he looks at a polar bear, he sees “a species whose numbers are thriving and are at their greatest numbers in the last four decades.”
But powerful interest groups see something different, he said.
“They see the opportunity to use the Endangered Species Act as a land-use planning tool. They see using the ESA to complicate, delay and ultimately halt energy exploration and production in Alaska.”
ESA attorney in budget Parnell said he has “taken every opportunity I can to push OCS development,” including supporting Shell’s 2010 Chukchi exploration plan.
A few weeks ago the state filed legal briefs urging the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to reject the listing of the polar bear as threatened, he said.
“If the legal theory underlying the polar bear listing gains traction — that is that a species is threatened by a speculative climate model about the future of changes in the climate rather than by population or its current state as a species — then environmental groups could potentially gain threatened listings” for other species, “no matter how healthy the populations and that could bring resource development to a halt.”
The governor said he believes it is time to devote more resources to this effort, and is including a new position at the Department of Law in his budget, “an attorney whose singular focus will be … on Endangered Species Act issues,” along with $800,000 for expertise from outside counsel to help with ESA issues.
“We’re going to continue to take this fight to the mat to protect our jobs and our economy, so that the ESA, the Endangered Species Act, is used to truly protect species and not used to lock up our opportunities here,” Parnell said.
Gas line: Not time to change course Parnell defended the state’s role under the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act in pushing an Alaska gas line.
“There are those who say we are on the wrong track, that progress on the gas line is stalled.”
But today, he said, “we have four major international companies working on Alaska’s North Slope gas … whereas just two years ago, we were at a standstill. Never before has Alaska seen this level of participation from the major North Slope producers and a well-known pipeline company,” with open seasons next year and continuing field work.
Calling on a football analogy, the governor said the state was stuck deep in its own territory for almost 30 years, but “we’ve finally begun moving the ball down the field” toward the end zone, the “project sanction decision to start construction.”
“And now that we’re finally making progress, critics are saying that it’s time to punt; it’s time to give it up and try something else.
“Well my response to these armchair quarterbacks is this: We are making progress; we’ve chosen the game plan; it’s moving the ball down the field. Why change strategies in the midst of a successful drive?
“As your governor I’m going to go with what’s working,” Parnell said. In-state gas; taxes In-state gas is an important issue for the Interior and for Southcentral and the in-state gas line team is on track in identifying and evaluating options for in-state gas, Parnell said.
“We understand from the studies that North Slope gas would be incredibly costly to bring to the Interior at this point, given the conditioning required and the distance,” he said, and the administration is working to keep all options open for the Interior.
On issue of oil and gas taxes, Parnell said he wanted to clarify his position because “things are getting misconstrued.”
Tax stability is key “and arbitrary changes don’t help anybody,” he said.
There are those who say the state has “the wrong mix of risk sharing and incentives.”
“If the evidence is there, we can take another look: But the benefits would have to be demonstrable and outweigh the long-term benefits of stability.”
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