Comment.  Governor Sean Parnell is understandably concerned about Barak Obama’s new executive order directed at Alaska.  The action purports to improve coordination among Federal agencies responsible for permitting energy projects by establishing an, "Interagency Working Group on Coordination of Domestic Energy Development and Permitting in Alaska (Working Group)."  If Obama had any management background, he would know that this effort just creates more opportunity for talk and confusion and delay.  Just one more meeting of over a dozen high level officials and a thousand more telephone calls and emails to deal with–all kept neatly in check by a White House representative of the Council on Environmental Quality and the Interior Department leadership.  Then there are the other EOs this Interagency Task Force must comply with, including the one dealing with ocean policy.  An experienced manager, confronted with lack of cooperation and coordination among those reporting to him would summon them to the oval office and say, "Start coordinating and cooperating and expediting these permits.  Let’s cut some fat, eliminate duplication, ban unnecessary delay and get the job done.  Do I make myself clear?"  Besides the fundamental management flaw in Obama’s executive order is the legal obfuscation it creates.  Agencies with a bias against free enterprise in general and the oil industry in particular know very well how to react to a non-congressionally created executive order.  In their usual passive-aggressive way, these agency heads will just say, "well, Mr. Interagency Task Force Coordinator (Deputy Secretary of the Interior, whose office has been complicit in establishing and prolonging illegal drilling moratoria), we’d like to cooperate but your presidential authority does not trump the mandates of law and regulation that guide our decision process.  We cannot simply violate statutory and regulatory law because you want to do so.  If you want us to proceed differently, get the law changed or wait for us to promulgate new regulations.  Furthermore, before we sign off on anything we’ll need concurrence of our attorneys and other Interagency partners from the Defense Department, the gas pipeline Federal Coordinator, tribal and village stakeholders and many others."  After this new bureaucracy gets through meeting, calling, emailing a laborinth-like organizational chart dominated by dotted and not straight lines, one should be surprised to see any future oil and gas project be approved."

AP by Cris Kahn.  Oil giant ConocoPhillips said Thursday it will split into two companies: one that produces oil and another that refines it into gasoline and other fuels.

ADN Op-Ed by Bill Walker advocating elimination of the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA).

ADN-AP by Becky Bohrer.  Alaska’s Democratic senator said Wednesday that the state needs to play hardball to make progress toward building a major natural gas pipeline.  U.S.Sen. Mark Begich told The Associated Press that state leaders should tell TransCanada Corp. that the clock is running and it’s time to produce results.