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Committee passes bill to eliminate ACMP project petition right Bill does not address other permitting issues; AOGA’s Brady says industry has no way of knowing what will be required to get a permit for an oil and gas project — or how long it will take Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
The House Special Committee on Oil and Gas heard testimony on House Bill 439 Feb. 21 and Feb. 26 from both Phillips Alaska Inc. — which had permits for five project delayed by petitions to the Coastal Policy Council — and the attorney representing the North Slope resident who filed those positions.
Both testified in favor of the bill, which eliminates the right to petition the Coastal Policy Council over individual consistency determinations. (See story in Feb. 24 issue of PNA.)
Not surprisingly, their reasons for supporting the bill were different.
But the individual consistency determination petition is not the only permitting issue of concern to industry. Judy Brady, executive director of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, said AOGA supports HB 439, and is also working on a list of proposals addressing permitting issues. The problem, Brady said, is that under the state's permitting system industry has no way of knowing in advance what will be required to get a permit for an oil and gas project — or how long it will take to get that permit.
House Oil and Gas passed the bill out of committee Feb. 26. It now goes to House Resources.
Nancy Wainwright, an active Alaska environmentalist and the Anchorage attorney who represented the petitioner, told the committee that there is more than enough frustration with this process to go around. The Alaska Coastal Management Program process doesn't work for the public and needs to be fixed, she said.
Wainwright blamed the Division of Governmental Coordination, which manages the Alaska Coastal Management Program. DGC's regulations are a failure, she said: DGC and its regulations are the problem.
As for the five petitions filed this year, Wainwright denied that those petitions delayed Phillips' projects: the delays, she said, were caused by DGC.
Her client is not opposed to development, she said, but concerned about private property. The family owns property listed on the National Register of Historic Places, she said, and has family grave sites in the area. They want compensation for prior damage and guarantees of no further damage, she said, and they want payment for access to their land. Multiple problems Judy Brady of AOGA said the organization supports HB 439. The legislation is “very clear” and “very focused on the petition process itself,” she said.
But the petition process is only one problem with permitting, she said, and AOGA is “going to be concentrating over the next few months in putting together a package of things addressing permitting issues in this state so that over the next two years as the new administration comes on, when the Legislature says what can we do to help, we will have some clear ideas about how that could work.”
Brady said Alaska is the only state with both elevation and a petition process. Andm appeals of each agency decision. And the petition process is not part of the state's administrative procedures act: “In other words, you do not have to petition to go to court — you can go directly to court.” That, Brady said, is what the Coastal Policy Council intended when they tried to eliminate the petition process in the 1980s.
DGC does not oppose the bill Patrick Galvin, director of the Division of Governmental Coordination, told the committee “there are members of the public who would like to have the ability to appeal through administrative agencies… rather than having to go directly to court.” But, he said, the current petition process does not provide a real appeal because it looks at only whether comments were fairly considered, not at the consistency determination itself.
Galvin said the division does not oppose the bill, although it would like to see a discussion “with the folks that are involved in our program — including industry, the conservation groups, individuals who participate in our processes and local governments — to see if there's another vehicle, but we don't have time at this point in the session to do that.” Other project delayed Ken Donajkowski, Phillips Alaska Inc. health, environment, safety and training manager, told the committee “the petition process addressed in this bill significantly delayed a total of five consistency determinations for Phillips Alaska during the months of December and January just past. This petition process enables an individual to easily hamper responsible oil and gas development. House Bill 439 appropriately removes this needless component from the overall ACMP process.”
In addition to the five petitioned projects, Donajkowski said, “an entirely unrelated project package was impacted for 15 days because DGC staff needed to prepare for the Coastal Policy Council hearing.”
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