The Alaska Legislature is preparing an official complaint letter to President Barack Obama after the federal government canceled planned oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic Ocean.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the Alaska Senate Resources Committee met to consider House Joint Resolution 301, a document that states in part that the Legislature \u201copposes the recent decisions of the Obama Administration to cancel future lease sales in the Chukchi and the Beaufort seas and to deny the suspension of Shell and Statoil\u2019s leases.\u201d<\/p>\n
The letter comes as the Legislature considers the future of the AKLNG natural gas project, whose economic grounds are based in part on the future availability of natural gas from offshore sources. Oil from wells drilled in federal waters is also expected to extend the life of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.<\/p>\n
Kara Moriarty of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association was one of two people to offer public comment in support of the letter on Saturday and explained that the federal waters of the outer continental shelf are believed to have average reserves \u201cof about 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said Royal Dutch Shell\u2019s recent abandonment of its exploratory well in the Chukchi Sea \u2014 after spending more than $7 billion to develop it \u2014 is not a sign that the Arctic is too difficult or lacks energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust because Shell did not have a commercial discovery \u2026 doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s not interest in the offshore, and it doesn\u2019t mean those 27 billion barrels (of oil) and 132 trillion cubic feet (of gas) are not there,\u201d Moriarty said.<\/p>\n
She added that the cancellation of the leases is an example \u201conce again where the state is better than the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also offering support was Barbara Huff Tuckness, a spokeswoman for Teamsters Union Local 959.<\/p>\n
The Resources Committee is expected to rapidly approve the letter of complaint, which has no binding power on the federal government.<\/p>\n
Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, said the federal government should be considering the fact that Arctic development will go forward regardless of what the United States does.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur neighbors are going to develop their offshore with or without us,\u201d he said. \u201cI have much more confidence in the American technology and regulatory environment than I do China\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
After its expected approval by the Senate Resources Committee, the resolution would be subject to a vote of the full Senate and be referred to the House, where it may be subject to committee approval before being voted on by the full House and becoming effective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Alaska Legislature is preparing an official complaint letter to President Barack Obama after the federal government canceled planned oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic Ocean. On Saturday, the Alaska Senate Resources Committee met to consider House Joint Resolution 301, a document that states in part that the Legislature \u201copposes the recent decisions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alaska-legislature","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8053"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}