Sen. Murkowski rolls out energy ‘vision’

Describes her wide-ranging report as a conversation starter, calls for opening ANWR and improving NPR-A access

Wesley Loy

For Petroleum News

Energy is good. So begins a new report from U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski titled “Energy 20/20: A Vision for America’s Energy Future.”

Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, released the 123-page report on Feb. 4 in Washington.

She said the document is not the makings of a comprehensive energy bill. Rather, it is “meant to begin a conversation” for the new 113th Congress.

Murkowski is the top-ranking Republican on the Democrat-controlled Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The chairman is Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Murkowski’s “Energy 20/20” is a sweeping and largely familiar wish list of projects and policies for Alaska and the nation. The document includes sections on conservation, clean energy technology, environmental responsibility and “effective government.”

During a press conference on the report, the senator said developing new technologies is key for reducing harmful greenhouse gases. But she said policies that inflate energy costs won’t fly at home, where rural Alaskans already face crushing prices for fuel.

The first and largest section of the report is called “Producing More,” and covers oil and gas, coal, unconventional fossil fuels such as shale oil and methane hydrates, renewables such as hydro and solar, and nuclear power.

“The United States should establish a national goal to produce enough additional oil, biofuels, and synthetic fuels to become independent of OPEC imports by 2020,” the report says.

It notes that domestic crude oil production is running higher now than at any point since 1997.

“Claims that very recent federal policies have had a significant role in the increase in domestic oil production are ... deeply misleading,” the report says. “About 96 percent of the increase in domestic oil production is attributable to growth on state and private land.”

Alaska has a great deal of federal land, and an expansive outer continental shelf.

To reach energy independence from OPEC, access to federal resources must be increased, Murkowski said. And more collaboration with Canada and Mexico is needed.

Among the steps she supports:

•Streamline and simplify the federal permitting process to ensure that offshore leases are developed in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere.

•Open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil industry exploration and production. This should include “timely lease sales” and a 50-50 split of revenue between the federal government and the state.

•The National Petroleum Reserve‐Alaska “must be immediately placed into full availability for oil and natural gas leasing, consistent with its statutory designation. The reserve must be thoughtfully developed with roads, bridges, and pipeline facilities to promote broad onshore development of the diffuse resource base, while simultaneously accommodating the transportation of oil and natural gas from offshore fields in the Chukchi Sea to the Trans‐Alaska Pipeline System. ‘Roadless’ options for the NPR‐A should be expressly withdrawn from consideration.”

Murkowski makes many other points in her report.

She disagrees with using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a stockpile of crude in Gulf Coast caverns, as a tool for temporarily relieving high retail gasoline prices. The oil should be held for true emergencies.

“Oil scarcity is a myth,” the report says, noting the United States has not only billions of barrels of proved reserves, but vast quantities of shale oil and crude classified as “technically recoverable” or “undiscovered.”

The report also says...

Nuclear energy “must remain a viable contributor to America’s power supply.”

Tax increases on fossil fuel producers “are ill‐advised, as higher taxes on a good or service will result in less of it — not more.”

U.S. alternative fuels policies “have come to rely on burdensome mandates, inappropriate restrictions, and erratic subsidization.” Yet alternative fuels hold great promise.

“From algal biofuels to natural gas and coal‐derived products, as well as combinations of these and other feedstocks, the potential options for diversification of our transportation sector’s energy supply have perhaps never been greater.”

The “Energy 20/20” report is posted online at bit.ly/Energy2020Doc.