McGuire prepping for Obama, Kerry visit

Anchorage Republican says Alaska’s community and state leaders poised to host administration, discuss state’s Arctic priorities

STEVE QUINN

For Petroleum News

Sen. Lesil McGuire believes this month could be among the most pivotal for the state to advance its Arctic policy issues with the federal government.

With a visit from President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry imminent, McGuire, who along with colleague Bob Herron has been on the frontlines of the state’s Arctic policy mission, believes coming weeks could be the most telling.

The Anchorage Republican spoke to Petroleum News about what she would like to see for the state during the administration’s visit.

Petroleum News: With the president’s visit within coming weeks, what would you like to see accomplished on Alaska’s behalf?

McGuire: This is a very monumental visit. The president hasn’t spent any time in Alaska during his presidency and as you know not very many United States presidents have. What’s important is that we get an opportunity during his time to convey the Alaskan policy and viewpoint on the Arctic.

Certainly he will be here to tell us what his vision is for the Arctic Council over the next two years but my hope is that all of us Arctic leaders will get an opportunity to educate the president and the Secretary of State John Kerry on what we’ve already done in the way of Arctic policy and what it means to be an Arctic resident.

My concern, and I think it’s echoed by many Alaskans, is that the president and the secretary might come and not take in any of the experience that they have, but rather come to tell us more of what the federal government intends to do and how it’s going to be in the Arctic over the next two years.

Petroleum News: With that in mind, there are different agendas. Most in Alaska would like for the agenda geared toward economic development and the Obama administration seeks a climate change agenda.

McGuire: That’s the rub. Bob and I have made tremendous progress over the last two years in terms of creating a dialogue with the White House Arctic policy group and the State Department Arctic policy group. We at least moved them to a place where they acknowledge a third prong of Arctic effort in economic development for the people of the Arctic. What we don’t want to see is that third prong relegated to the last position.

That will be our goal when the president and his team are here, to remind them of how important that tenet is and for us on the Alaska Arctic policy commission, it was central to everything we did in our report, so we want to be sure we get an opportunity to present the final reports to them. I would just say this: a couple of weeks ago Bob and I had a teleconference with the White House planning for their upcoming visit and discussing policy efforts.

What I tried to re-emphasize is the nexus between what I believe are the president’s goals of improving the quality of life of Americans - and in this case it would be Alaskans - who may have been culturally disadvantaged, may have been disadvantaged by the location of their communities, rural versus urban.

This president has made a strong commitment to minorities hoping to bring up ethnic groups who have been historically disadvantage and fundamentally made a commitment to those who have been impoverished.

What I pointed out is right in the state of Alaska, in rural Alaska and the Arctic you can see some of the most challenged living conditions on the earth. I talked about affordable energy, suicide rates, access to telecommunications. All of those things that help bring up a community and the link between promoting Arctic development and opportunities and improvement in the quality of people’s lives.

I think there is an opportunity here for a win-win, for the president, for the State Department, and his White House team by touring Kotzebue and other places to see where it’s the investment into infrastructure and the economic development that has actually made the biggest difference.

The notion of tackling climate change and global warming during this two-year stint that we have as chair for the Arctic Council, I don’t see how progress can be made. It’s not a scientific board. I do see where progress can be made with infrastructure and the lives of the people in the Arctic.

Global warming is such a complex scientific topic. There are many drivers. I don’t accept and I know many don’t that black carbon is the sole contributor to it. I mean there are cyclical factors. Even assuming that black carbon is the focus, Alaska puts out less than 1 percent of all the greenhouse gases. If you are talking about a consumption-based issue, certainly the Alaska audience is not going to be receptive to that with only 737,000 people.

Petroleum News; What kind of role can the Legislature have during this visit, be it you, Bob Herron, or others such as Bryce Edgmon or Neal Foster?

McGuire: Right now Bob and I are invited, so we’ve inserted ourselves into the day, the Aug. 31 visit itself. We want an opportunity to continue dialogue with the White House face-to-face and present these reports. The reports are very thorough. They will give the Obama administration and the president a real look into the challenges that we face in the Arctic. It was a two-year effort with 26 members from all walks of life. We want to emphasize that it’s not a political document. It’s a document generated by a group of Alaskans, 10 of whom were elected to office and 16 who were not.

They were subject matter experts spanning the state with their representation. I think having other members representing the Arctic will be important to give the president real insight into what it means to live, hope and dream in the Arctic. There are a lot of perceptions about Alaska. You’ve heard me say that my fear is they look at us as a snow globe and that the secretary of State could view this as an opportunity to preserve everything in this snow globe, then walk away believing he did his job while the president believes in the same.

Our challenge, our job while the president is here - Bob, myself and other members representing the Arctic area - is to put a face on what it means to be an Arctic resident.

We are having a hearing leading up to it on Aug. 25. We’ve invited the president of Iceland and all of the Arctic mayors to come and speak. My hope is that those same mayors will be able to communicate a message when he comes to bring that local feeling to national policy making.

What they will talk about in this panel on the 25th is shipping. These shipping lanes increase every year. That is not something that is going to change. People in the Arctic want to know what the United States government is prepared to do by way of resources. We don’t have an Arctic port as you know. There are spill response plans in place that are sufficient to allay the concerns of many of the mayors. But there is no real national plan moving forward for the Arctic.

Some of the concerns are national security. I follow what the Russians do daily. They created an entirely new Arctic force. They are holding military exercises. Just last week they filed again to have their oil and gas claims legalized by the United Nations. They are way ahead of us.

They are a close northern neighbor with tense relations so I think that is something I also want to emphasize to the president and his team, that the Arctic is a place of opportunity and economic development, but it’s also a strategic place in terms of the United States security.

Petroleum News: Who do you think would have the strongest, most influential voice for Alaska? Would it be you and Bob who have been on the forefront of these issues the last two-plus years, someone like Reggie Joule, the governor or maybe Craig Fleener?

McGuire: I think it’s going to be a combination of all of us, all hands on deck. This has been the strategy we’ve had the last couple of years.

We’ve traveled to Washington and testified in Lisa’s committee (Sen. Murkowski, chair of the Senate Energy Committee). It was the group that you just mentioned. Bob and I have credibility because we worked with the team over the last two years. We listened to them. There is a mutual respect among our policy-making groups.

Craig Fleener recently joined us. He brings the governor’s voice but also he’s from Fort Yukon and he brings an indigenous Alaskan voice.

And the mayors, too. The indigenous mayors like Charlotte Brower (North Slope Borough), Reggie Joule (Northwest Arctic Borough) and Denise Michaels (Nome). They bring extremely compelling voices to the table. I think it will be a team effort so it’s difficult to know who will have the most influence.

I think about what influences me versus what influences John Coghill or Charlie Huggins or Cathy Giessel. There will be a team coming here from the White House and the State Department. The State Department team is a little bit more academic in how they approach things. They come up largely from the diplomatic corps. They look at it from a geopolitical standpoint.

The White House looks at it from the standpoint of implementing the president’s goal prior to him leaving office. What’s interesting about this visit is that this is coming on the tail end of the president being in office for eight years. He will leave half way through the United States chairmanship of the Arctic Council.

What this President has to say certainly matters. We have a history of respecting what our president has to say even if we disagree with him and certainly he will make an attempt to implement his goals during the time he has. But recognize we will have another president halfway through the chairmanship.

Petroleum News: You have been involved in PNWER (the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region) for several years. How can PNWER help Alaska during these two critical years?

McGuire: Bob and I have been working on just this very issue. Where I think PNWER’s major role over the next few years lies in information sharing and bringing other states into the loop and recognizing what it means to be in a Arctic region and an Arctic country.

The Canadian counterpart of it is rich because Canadians identify as an Arctic nation already and they make up half of the PNWER membership. So in many ways they are teaching us what it means to be an Arctic nation. That is a lot of the dialogue that goes on in the PNWER Arctic caucus meetings.

They are ahead of us in a lot of ways in their Arctic infrastructure planning. Information sharing to places like Montana and Idaho, just places in the United States that might not have a lot of information about the Arctic and why it’s important - PNWER is going to be important in bringing residents from those areas to the table. The mission of PNWER is so aligned with what are trying to accomplish the next two years.

It’s a mission that regionally, the Northwest has resources that if they were all combined into one country it would be a very sizable gross domestic product. And we have untapped resources that should be responsibly developed using best practices. It’s a cooperation between the private sector and the public sector, something we are already seeing right now in Alaska. When you look at response capabilities in the Arctic, we look at Shell and the fleet they have moving in for exploration.

I think PNWER and its leadership have many more examples of that which will be good for the United States to look at. The final part of why they are so important is that Canada just held that chairmanship and their theme was in fact Arctic development for the people of the Arctic, the exact theme that Alaska would like to have.

(Canadian Prime Minister) Stephen Harper listened to the people of the Arctic and appointed Leona Aglukkaq, a Native woman who was the premier of Nunavut to be chair of the Arctic Council. It was Leona’s work over the last two years that the United States we hope will take to heart and follow. She has gone out of her way to get to the know Lisa and the governor. She has made herself an ambassador if you will, so she will be a good resource to us as well.

One of the pieces we picked up already was the Arctic Economic Council. The United States was prepared to leave that, not fund it and not appoint members to it. It’s something that was created by the Canadian group. Fortunately this is a case where continuing the dialogue - even if you don’t agree with everything it’s so important in diplomacy - the fact that Bob and I remained on those weekly teleconferences and at the table it opened up the chance to get Alaska on the Economic Council.

Now Tara Sweeney is the chair. The White House and the State Department came to us and said we are not interested in it, but if you guys are interested and willing to put forth the effort, you can. So that’s another place where PNWER is continuing to connect us to the Canadians who sat on different working groups and were part of making policy work.

Petroleum News: You mentioned Shell. Do you think Shell has run out of mistakes that can be made with all the attention being focused on them?

McGuire: I want to say this. Like the practice of medicine or the practice of law, resource development is a practice. We strive to improve. We can look back 50 years and can say we’ve made significant practical and environmental improvements. Hopefully, 20 years from now we’ll be able to say the same with technology that has led us to a place where we have more directional drilling.

My fear in the Shell situation is that the public may feel that Shell has run out of mistakes to make yet I know there will be more. The Arctic is a challenged environment: it’s cold; it’s remote. The science being adapted to it from the Gulf (of Mexico) has to be changed.

The shipping part, what we are learning, is as important as the drilling itself. I support Shell. I support their efforts. The United States has a chance to access its hydrocarbon reserves in the Chukchi and the Beaufort for national security reasons, for American energy reasons. I think it’s a strategic place on earth and it’s vital that we have a success. Shell is an industry leader.

They started in Alaska out in Cook Inlet. They have the most experience. Do I think they will make more mistakes? Yes. What I hope this is the response to those mistakes is quick and their communication is as candid as it can be with the public, then there is a plan forward that leads to production to the Chukchi and the Beaufort.

Petroleum News: Back in Juneau, should you get called back into special session, what minimally would you like to accomplish?

McGuire: I think a chance to hear what the governor’s plan for closing the fiscal gap is, that’s the most important - even if we can’t solve it within 30 days. I think it’s unlikely that you would see the Legislature vote on a fiscal package of the magnitude that will have to be proposed to close a $4 billion deficit in 30 days. What I think it will do is give the Legislature an opportunity to review the plan, review the choices. The complexity of closing the fiscal gap is unlike anything else you’ll tackle during the Legislative session.

I’ve tackled it in my earlier years in the House. It’s emotional. It divides you and it doesn’t even divide you along party lines. It divides you along regional lines. It’s going to be a long journey to get to a place where a fiscal plan is implemented and yet we know that has to be done. We’ve reached that point where volumetrically we are no longer in a position to continue sustaining the Alaska budget on just the trans-Alaska pipeline revenue.

Even if the price were to spike upward over a period of time, the volume is so low that the numbers simply don’t add up. None of us enjoy talking about taxes or use of the Permanent Fund, but on the other hand I view it as an opportunity for Alaskans to stabilize the economy and move forward.

One of the biggest concerns people have in the resource development area is that Alaska is going to remain unstable and there will be heavy taxes placed on them in an irrational and unreasonable fashion out of desperation. I think that has a chilling effect on resource development in the state.

It’s going to take some heavy lifting. I’d like for it to be an opportunity for lawmakers to see what the governor is proposing, think about it, reflect on it, talk to our neighbors about and come back in January and get to work implementing it

Petroleum News: So would this in instead of gas line discussions?

McGuire: I think there will be gas line discussions, but my early intel on them is that the discussions aren’t going to take up 30 days. There isn’t enough to report yet. But it feeds into Alaska’s fiscal blueprint so we can’t ignore it.