With the re-opening of the Chukchi Sea for oil exploration comes new economic opportunity, and the State of Alaska wants to be sure it has a say in what happens in federal waters off it shoreline.
Thursday, August 31st the State of Alaska filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit regarding access to the oil and gas resources located in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas on the Arctic Outer-Continental Shelf.
The U.S. Geological Survey and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management suggests as much as 40 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable conventional oil and more than 200 trillion cubic feet of conventional natural gas lie in the region.
It is hoped that OCS production would boost throughput in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and increase state revenue and jobs.
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| Kara Mortiarty |
Alaska Oil & Gas Association Kara Mortiarty: “Frankly, development can impact Alaska in a very positive way. It creates jobs. Even though we wouldn’t get the same percentage of royalty as we would a state land, there are still the infrastructure that would be built, there would be property tax paid, they would have to pay a corporate income tax.”
More than filling up TAPS and lowering the tariff charges, Senate Majority Leader Peter Micchiche feels that the underlying principal of state’s rights must always be vigorously defended.
Senator Peter Micciche (R D-O): “When you look at the folks that are intervening right now, there is a long list – League of Conservation Voters, there is Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club – a lot of people from somewhere else that don’t believe that Alaska has the right to develop our own resources…We have a constitutional requirement to produce our natural resources.”
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| Peter Micciche |
Micciche further stated that it was the reason Alaska became a state, and only by developing our natural resources can we sustain ourselves.
Late in his presidency, President Barack Obama withdrew the entire Chukchi OCS and the vast majority of the Beaufort OCS from the Department of Interior’s 2016 5-Year Offshore Leasing Plan without consulting with state and local governments. In April, President Donald Trump reversed that decision, signing an order reopening the Chukchi Sea OCS and portions of the Beaufort Sea for potential exploration.
This matter is now in court. The State’s motion seeks to intervene in support of the President’s April order. In a written statement, Governor Bill Walker suggested that state agencies routinely balance environmental conservation and protection with responsible resource development, and the Arctic OCS is no different.
Story as aired on KSRM News:
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