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NW Arctic Borough looks to the future Conditional support for offshore oil and gas; wants to see rural Alaska communities share the benefits of resource development Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Worried about any potential threat to their subsistence wildlife resources, the coastal communities of Arctic Alaska have been less than enthusiastic about the specter of oil and gas exploration and development in the Arctic offshore, especially on the federal outer continental shelf where oil revenues would tend to flow in the direction of the federal government rather than to rural communities impacted by industrial operations. But, recognizing the seeming inevitability of oil development in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas and seeing a need for involvement in what is happening, some in the communities have been changing their views.
The Northwest Arctic Borough, the municipality with jurisdiction over land along the Chukchi Sea coast to the south of the North Slope, used to oppose offshore development but changed its position in 2011, Reggie Joule, the borough mayor, told the Law Seminars International’s Energy in Alaska conference on Dec. 5. Shell is conducting a program of exploration oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea, to the northwest of the borough.
Fundamental change Climate change is bringing fundamental change to the Arctic and people are seeing the potential to make money in the region, Joule said.
“Our world is changing,” he said. “There are challenges that we’re going to have to deal with … but there are also opportunities to look forward to.”
The borough can now move forward to address issues relating to the community impacts of oil development and questions such as the possibility of sharing offshore revenues with the federal government, Joule said. And industry can work with the local communities, making use of traditional knowledge about wildlife such as bowhead whales and other marine animals that the local people harvest for their sustenance: That traditional knowledge can be applied to scientific research, he said.
“There’s been a history in the development of Alaska’s resources where the Native people of Alaska … have said ‘Work with us. We can bring value to what you’re doing,’” Joule said.
Resolution in 2011 Joule said that in 2011 the Northwest Arctic Borough passed a resolution supporting offshore development, contingent on some conditions under which that development needed to take place. The resolution, a joint resolution with the North Slope Borough, documented those conditions in several policy areas: the need for baseline environmental data; strict government oversight of the industry; the use of cooperative agreements with subsistence hunters; adequate consideration of the cumulative impacts of industrial activities; oil revenue sharing with the communities; a zero-discharge standard for Arctic waters; investment in effective oil spill prevention and response arrangements; an effective U.S. Coast Guard presence; and the compulsory use of Alaska marine pilots on vessels in federal waters of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Oil must be transported to land by pipeline rather than by tanker.
But, with growing volumes of traffic through the Bering Strait, and with a past history of safe offshore oil exploration, the most likely cause of a future mess in the Arctic seas is marine transportation, Joule said. And it will be the industry rather than government that will come to the aid of the communities, helping to ensure food security in the event of an accident, he said. They are the ones who will be prepared to clean up any mess they make, but they will probably be asked to help out with anything else that may go wrong, he said.
Coastal management In terms of local involvement in decision making, Joule particularly bemoaned the loss of the Alaska coastal zone management program, a system that reverted to the federal government in 2011 when the Alaska state legislature failed to renew the state system. What are people afraid of, Joule asked, commenting that both Prudhoe Bay and the Red Dog mine had thrived through the state coastal zone management era. At the national level, the coastal people will turn to the process for consultation with tribes rather than to the state to have their say, he commented.
And the state would find the Alaska Native community to be “a really good partner to have” in the debate over the application in Alaska of the Endangered Species Act, for example, he suggested.
“We don’t have that relationship between the state of Alaska and Alaska’s tribal people,” Joule said.
Everyone should benefit Joule also commented on the need for economic prosperity for all Alaskans, and not just for city dwellers, especially given the fact that the oil fields and mines that generate that prosperity are located in rural Alaska, and not in the cities. The debate about “this rural and urban business” is not the right conversation: The right conversation is how to lift the boat for everyone, including the people in rural Alaska, he said, citing the heightened U.S. Coast Guard presence in rural parts of the state as an example of what can be achieved but also commenting on what he sees as a need for several ports in western Alaska.
“What’s in it for us?” Joule asked.
Rural Alaska is evolving and maturing in its thinking, with its people having many natural resources while also living under a shifting paradigm, Joule said.
“Those resources are our responsibility,” Joule said, commenting that a subsistence mapping project currently under way is gathering information carried in the memories of the Native people, carried forward from preceding generations and still having value today.
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