Ramras Sees Bullet Line/AGIA Conflict - NOAA/White House Conspiracy Against OCS Energy? - Western Legislators Question Salazar Energy Motives

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....."