See Our Editorial Below: "Environmental and Alaska Native Extremists Are Sowing Seeds for Alaska's Economic Destruction"

ADN by Sean Cockerham.  The nonprofit, Alaska House New York, opened in September 2008, in a 3,000-square-foot space in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan. Until now, it has been privately financed by founder Alice Rogoff, a wealthy advocate of Alaska Native art. She describes it as an effort to promote the state's business and culture as well as sell art.  "I did this because I thought it was really important, not just for the state in the big picture but for the sake of village life and subsistence and Native people whose livelihoods are dependent on so much of this state's economy continuing to flourish," Rogoff said in an interview. "Well, I can't afford to keep New York open anymore so we're either going to close it or we're going to find funding for it."  She has proposed various amounts of state support in recent months. Rogoff and other representatives of Alaska House met with a special assistant to Gov. Sean Parnell (NGP Photo) on Thursday and presented a request for a $600,000 appropriation for "public relations and economic development marketing."    *    ADN by AP.  Anti-drilling activists visited federal officials this week to lobby against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on offshore sites in Alaska.  Sarah James from Arctic Village, on the border of ANWR, and five other activists -- including two from Canada -- were in Washington on a trip organized by the Alaska Wilderness League.  The group met with several high-ranking officials from the Obama administration -- including Assistant Interior Secretary Tom Strickland and Larry Echohawk, head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs -- as well as members of the Alaska delegation and a staffer for the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.    *    Peak Oil Review.  Shell said it will decide within months whether to begin drilling for oil and gas off the Alaskan coast despite strong opposition. The Anchorage Daily News said Thursday that environmentalists and Alaska North Slope officials are opposing Arctic drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. (11/6, #14)

Environmental and Alaska Native Extremists Are Sowing Seeds for Alaska's Economic Destruction

Yesterday Brian Tomlinson (NGP Photo) of Anchorage wrote to Governor Parnell after, "having read in today's Anchorage Daily News that Mrs. Alice Rogoff Rubinstein (ADN Photo), is asking for funds from the State of Alaska to support her pet project, the Alaska House, in NYC's trendy Soho District. Last night the Alaska House hosted an event to 'Celebrate the Bounty of the Bering Sea Before It's Too Late', with the Managing Director of the World Wildlife Fund's Bering Sea and Kamchatka Program, citing the devastating effects of climate change and negative impacts to Alaskan Natives.  This issue is highly politically charged with inferences to global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions."   Tomlinson spoke for many Alaskans when he went on to urge the Governor to oppose public funding (85% from oil revenue) for a venue that supports fundraising strategies aimed at crushing the oil and gas industry.  The Governor and Legislature will surely see this request for what it is and politely but firmly tell Ms. Rubinstein that funding a NYC non-profit--even with an Alaska theme--is inappropriate.  

 The Washington visit by Alaskan and Canadian Native opponents of reasonable and safe oil and gas exploration and development in the state is more troublesome.  It adds to Alaska's struggle to survive 'death by a thousand cuts', which we have been illustrating herein.  The cumulative effect of onerous, unfair, Federal regulatory activities is being aided and abetted by certain Alaska Native special interests.  These interests seem to care not that the state derives nearly all of its operating budget from energy production.  They seem unaware of the significant school, social service, medicaid, welfare, power cost equalization and disaster relief funds that flow toward villages because of the oil and gas bounty.  Some of these Native special interests are being supported by environmental activist special interests.

Alaska may be facing a crisis it has never before known: spending its legacy wealth without a way to replenish it.  For this we can thank the incompetency of some key elected leaders in state and Federal positions, particularly over the last decade.  Being on the brink, the Obama Administration is well equipped to push Alaska's economy over the edge in the next few years, returning Alaska to a pre-pipeline wilderness and govenment dependent economy.  President Obama can accomplish this feat with a dedicated staff within the White House, Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency aided and abetted by grass roots constituencies like the World Wildlife Fund, the Alaska Wilderness League, Arctic Village and the North Slope Borough.

Alaska's elected leaders have not since statehood had such ponderous challenges before them.  Successful accomplishment of the mission to protect Alaska's economy and citizens will, indeed, be looked back on as a pioneering and leadership accomplishment of historical proportions.   -dh

ADN.  State Rep. Jay Ramras (NGP Photo), R-Fairbanks, said he plans to seek a legal analysis to determine if the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act of 2007 -- designed to spur North Slope natural gas development -- could thwart construction of a small-scale, in-state natural gas pipeline.  Two years ago, the state signed contracts to help pipeline company TransCanada Corp. begin building a large natural gas pipeline. The act commits the state to work only with TransCanada, and Ramras questioned the penalty Alaska might face if it uses financial incentives to back a competing project.  "The administration states again and again that the path forward is through the AGIA model," Ramras said. "But there are significant unanswered questions and Alaskans deserve concrete answers."  State natural gas specialists have identified limited scenarios where the penalty would be triggered. If, for example, an in-state project sends less than 500 million cubic feet per day through a pipeline, or if it gets gas from somewhere other than the North Slope, the state is safe from penalty.

Washington Examiner by Mark Tapscott.  Urban zoning in cities and suburbs divides land up into bite-size parcels and typically makes their use and development dependent upon securing approval from multiple levels of planning bureaucrats in government. But imagine if government tried to apply the same nghtmarish process to the ocean floor.  Sound outlandish? Don't bet on it. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) administrator Jane Lubchenco is working with the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on just such a plan, according to WhatAboutAlaska.com. The plan would seek to impose on 1.76 bilion acres of the American Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) the same sort of block-by-block  bureaucratic controls that environmentalists and others have used for years to stifle development on land.  (See our earlier comment: Death by a thousand cuts....")

NY Times by NOELLE STRAUB of Greenwire.  ...a way for the Obama administration to implement regulations while Congress continues to debate global climate change legislation. Bishop said Salazar is "bypassing the congressional approval process."  "By moving forward without the passage of a climate change bill passed in Congress, you are creating a number of unanswered questions," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Salazar. "These questions include, but are not limited to, how this initiative will place strains on the current DOI bureaucracy, how land use planners on the ground will implement this order, and what mechanisms will provide transparency in your department....."

KSKA.  Soon after BP and ConocoPhillips announced plans to combine resources to start Denali – The Alaska Gas Pipeline in April 2008, Bud Fackrell (NGP Photo) was appointed president of the project, which would eventually ship 4 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day from the North Slope to the Lower 48, Alaska and Canada. His talk, “Denali – an update on the Alaska gas pipeline project: a world class effort with global implications” was recorded on Friday October 30th at the Alaska World Affairs Council.

• Google Earth Movie: Denali Virtual Tour
• Community Forum: Denali Pipeline (19 Nov 2008)

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Politico reports, “While Sen. Barbara Boxer was celebrating her committee’s passage of a sweeping climate change bill Thursday, other Democrats and Republicans were already looking for a Plan B. “It dooms that particular legislation. The question is what comes next,” said Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (NGP Photo). “We will see what Plan B is.” Graham said his group would take the “good pieces” of the work by Boxer and the five other committees.”     *     FitsNews reports, “Last week, FITS published an in-depth report about how liberal special interests were the real driving force behind a new “conservative” advertising campaign aimed at protecting embattled U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.     *      The Washington Post reports, “Now, some groups have muted their alarms about wildfires, shrinking glaciers and rising seas. Not because they've stopped caring about them -- but because they're trying to win over people who might care more about a climate bill's non-environmental side benefits, such as "green" jobs and reduced oil imports. Instead, one spot from the EDF shows solar panels and windmills, while an announcer talks about jobs and a reduced dependence on foreign oil. "We need more renewable energy that's made in America and works for America, creating 1.7 million jobs," the narrator says. The spot doesn't mention the word "climate" and instead talks about cutting "carbon pollution," using a phrase common in recent ads by several groups.”     *     The Cascade Policy Institute’s Todd Wynn writes this in the Statesman (OR) Journal, “Because a cap-and-trade program is essentially an energy tax, the program would have an enormous effect on Americans by increasing the costs of almost everything that is needed or desired in our daily lives. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans do not have a clue about what a cap-and-trade program actually is and thus are unable to voice their possible concerns.”

Alaska Gas Pipeline Coordinator, Mark Meyers (NGP Photo), issued a report documenting status of projects.  Here is his cover letter and here is his full report.

See ADN story by Elizabeth Bluemink.  The Alaska Department of Natural Resources on Tuesday issued a 51-page report detailing work so far by TransCanada Corp. and Exxon Mobil, the two companies attempting to develop the pipeline under a state license, which requires the state to reimburse up to $500 million of the cost of the multibillion-dollar project.  The two companies now have 100 people working full-time on the project and have hired 24 Alaska firms as contractors. State officials and consultants are flying twice a month to Canada and Texas to monitor the companies' work. Also, TransCanada has purchased office space in Midtown, the report said.

Calgary Herald, by Shaun Polczer.   Mackenzie Valley proponents were still clinging to the dream of an Arctic gas pipeline on Tuesday even as signals from Ottawa seemed to herald its imminent demise.