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Bristol Bay project driven by jobs, local energy Samuelson said governor wasted no time in responding to region’s needs Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
Commercial fishing, the economic foundation of the Bristol Bay region, has been bad in recent years, and the region turned to the state, asking Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski to assist with oil and gas development, both for jobs to supplement fishing and for less expensive energy.
As a result, the state has offered exploration licensing for the area (see story on page XX this issue), and is preparing a best interest finding for a competitive oil and gas lease sale.
The state is working on oil and gas development with the Bristol Bay Native Corp. and with the local boroughs. There was a meeting in Anchorage Oct. 22 during the Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention to provide an update and a chance for Bristol Bay area representatives to talk to the governor about the proposal.
Robin Samuelson of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp. chaired the meeting.
He said the development proposal was suggested right after Murkowski was elected governor, when a few people in the region, among them his father, Harvey Samuelson, Bristol Bay Native Corp. land chair, and Nels Anderson, a former state senator, said the region needed to write to the governor and ask for help.
“We’ve been faced with five, six years of fishing disasters, communities were closing, schools were shutting down, city governments, borough governments, were looking in their little jars, and they were seeing the bottom,” he related.
The governor “wasted no time in responding” to Bristol Bay’s request, Samuelson said, and put Jim Clark, his chief of staff, as well as commissioners “on notice that our regions were a top priority of his administration ...” Are there resources? Commissioner of Natural Resources Tom Irwin said the process started in January and February with information coming into the governor’s office and the department from individuals and local governments in the Bristol Bay region.
The department determined that there was a resource worth pursuing and in July the department signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bristol Bay Native Corp., Irwin said, stressing cooperation, mutual interests and communications.
The department solicited and received interest in an exploration license in the Bristol Bay area, and is preparing a best interest finding, including input from local communities.
Information from communities is being gathered in October and November for the best interest finding, Irwin said, and in January, when the preliminary best interest finding is out, “We’ll go through the same process. That will be issued and then we’ll come back out to the communities for the input.” Onshore drilling, local participation, jobs Local participation was one of the things Bristol Bay insisted on, Samuelson said.
The region wants a stronger economy and saw oil and gas as a way to broaden its economic base, but with some caveats: development would be onshore, with directional drilling.
“We didn’t want to go offshore,” Samuelson said, “because of the sensitivity to the commercial fishing fleet, the subsistence and the resources of the region.”
Bristol Bay also insisted on participation at all levels and on “a responsive public process that was very transparent. We wanted everybody to be on ground level and sharing the information. No community should be left out of the process,” he said.
Then there were jobs, and training for jobs.
“We didn’t want the industry to arrive on our doorstep with a bunch of Texans as their workers. We wanted Alaskans, from the Alaska Peninsula and Bristol Bay, trained at SAVEC (the Southwest Alaska Vocational and Education Center in King Salmon) to be the workers on oil exploration, seismic work, etc.”
That concern was echoed by audience participants, and Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development Greg O’Claray said the state was working to identify skills already there and supplement where additional training is needed. But, he said, the state needs the commitment of residents of that area “that they’re willing to go into different occupations to supplement the low income they’re getting from fishing. You don’t have to quit fishing,” he said, pointing out that both he and Lt. Gov. Loren Leman are fishermen. These are just our day jobs, he said.
Pioneering roads would be necessary to support oil and gas exploration and development activities, Samuelson said, and those roads could “eventually evolve into a network of surface transportation within the region.” (See sidebar on access issues.)
Improved airports are also an issue, both for fish marketing and health. Many region residents have noted that the airports were “built for 206s, not DC-6s, to take off loaded with fish.”
“Fisheries has been, and always will be, our main industry in our region,” Samuelson said. “It’s sustainable and it’s renewable,” he said. Benefit also for fishing Nels Anderson said Murkowski “has done more for oil and gas exploration activities in the state of Alaska in four months than any other previous governor.”
Low-cost fuel, Anderson said, would help revitalize Bristol Bay’s fishery. It costs about $200 to make a ton of ice in Bristol Bay, he said, compared to about $50 in Cook Inlet.
“Failure to find low-cost energy is not an option,” he said.
Gov. Murkowski told the audience that it didn’t require any urging to get him involved, “because this is what my contribution is all about … creating a sound economy for the state of Alaska…”
As for the oil and gas potential, Murkowski said 25 years ago, “from the standpoint of geology, for oil and gas prospects, it was the North Slope, it was Cook Inlet, and it was Bristol Bay.”
Harvey Samuelson agreed. Bill Bishop, who discovered oil on the Kenai Peninsula at the Swanson River field in the late 1950s, later worked for the Bristol Bay Native Corp., Samuelson said. Bishop died a couple of years ago, “but he told me, ‘we got oil down there Harvey, be sure and don’t give up, just keep going after it, eventually you will get it, because I know there’s oil there.’” An area for independents Murkowski said the administration believes an oil and gas industry in the Bristol Bay area could supply “numerous jobs, and potentially a petrochemical industry, as well as providing low-cost energy for your traditional fish industry as well.” And, unlike the North Slope, Bristol Bay is at tidewater. If commercial quantities of gas are found, it won’t require an 800-mile pipeline, he said.
Commercial quantities of gas in the Bristol Bay region, the governor said, could be “a source of energy to power the region, instead of your current dependence on diesel.”
The governor said he would be in New Orleans Oct. 26 to speak to the Independent Petroleum Association of America, and predicted that independents will find Bristol Bay attractive.
It’s different than the North Slope, he said, where most of the natural gas is controlled by three companies. In the Bristol Bay area, the gas prospects are controlled by the state, Native regional corporations or the federal government.
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