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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
April 2008

Vol. 13, No. 15 Week of April 13, 2008

Hofmeister: U.S. must open federal lands, allow Americans access to new oil, gas

In the course of answering questions from reporters during an April 8 teleconference, John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., linked high fuel costs in Alaska and elsewhere to the withdrawal of federal lands from oil and gas exploration. Lack of new oil and gas supplies in the United States is driving prices higher, he said.

“This is the consequence of a deliberate, in my opinion callous, policy of the federal government of the United States to deny access to new hydrocarbons to the American people for more than 30 years,” Hofmeister said. “The moratorium on 85 percent of the outer continental shelf of the Lower 48 … has denied U.S. oil companies the opportunity to produce more hydrocarbons.”

The nation needs short-term, medium-term and long-term solutions to its use of energy, and will remain dependent on hydrocarbon fuels for decades to come, he said.

“This nation needs an energy strategy. It needs a federal policy. Those policies must deliver more access. … Shell would be interested in seeing how the opportunities present themselves and at the same time … we … approach the operating opportunities as and when we can also manage the social and the environmental and the cultural (issues).”

It is necessary to balance all of the issues involved in oil and gas development and production, by managing and mitigating the effects on wildlife and by managing the integration of traditional cultures, he said.

And Hofmeister slammed people who litigate against oil and gas development.

“I think those who use litigation efforts … to try to prevent development of Arctic or Alaska gas and oil are in a sense being unfair on the entirety of the American people and to the State of Alaska because of their parochial concerns,” Hofmeister said.

The people of America really do need more energy, he said.

—Alan Bailey






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