{"id":9319,"date":"2016-11-23T09:04:04","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T17:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/murkowski-lays-out-path-on-arctic-leases\/"},"modified":"2016-11-23T09:04:04","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T17:04:04","slug":"murkowski-lays-out-path-on-arctic-leases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/murkowski-lays-out-path-on-arctic-leases\/","title":{"rendered":"Murkowski lays out path on Arctic leases"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014<\/strong> Republicans have options to counteract the Obama administration\u2019s move to pull Arctic waters from the federal offshore oil and gas lease plan, but they are far from immediate.<\/p>\n

When the Interior Department released its 2017-2022 outer continental shelf, or OCS, lease plan document on Nov. 18 sans sales in Alaska\u2019s Beaufort and Chukchi seas, the state\u2019s leaders were instantly livid as environmental watchdogs rejoiced, tallying the news as a victory on the climate change front.<\/p>\n

A draft version of the lease plan included one lease sale in each of the Arctic waters.<\/p>\n

However, the release date of the plan was almost as important as what it contains. The \u201cproposed final plan\u201d instantly entered a 60-day congressional review period when it became public.<\/p>\n

In the absence of procedural or technical errors in drafting the plan, it amounts to a two-month window for the Republican-controlled Congress to object and adopt a joint resolution of appeal \u2014 back to the president.<\/p>\n

With the Nov. 18 release of the plan, the review will end in the last couple days of President Barack Obama\u2019s term, essentially locking in the plan as final.<\/p>\n

An exasperated Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in an interview with the Alaska Journal of Commerce, soon after the plan became public, that her staff will do the requisite due diligence in reviewing the 269-page document, more as a formality than anything. Her focus is on how to best mitigate the perceived damage with a Republican president and a new Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs (the lease plan) something that I wish we could, the first day of a new administration, the president-elect could wave a wand and make this all better, if you will? It\u2019s not that simple; and that\u2019s why we worked so hard to make sure the (Obama) administration did not do what they did,\u201d Murkowski said.<\/p>\n

She noted that it is not just Alaska\u2019s congressional delegation and industry pushing for the leases, but also North Slope mayors and Alaska Native corporations pushing for the potential economic benefits of Arctic OCS activity, as well as military commanders touting the need for national energy security.<\/p>\n

Hopeful the administration would take those pleas into account, Murkowski added she was particularly \u201cticked off\u201d that \u201cPresident Obama is telling the new administration to stand up to Russia, and then what does he do \u2014 he basically cedes leadership on Arctic energy production to the Russians. It is just incredible to think (the Russians) get the payroll; they get the jobs; they get the revenue and we\u2019re just watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

As chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Murkowski\u2019s office did not get a \u201cheads up\u201d call from Interior Secretary Sally Jewell or Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Abigail Hopper on the news.<\/p>\n

Alaska\u2019s senior senator has battled with Jewell, most notably on the secretary\u2019s 2013 decision to reject construction of a medical access road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.<\/p>\n

Murkowski has said several times she regrets voting to confirm Jewell for the cabinet post.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually heard of it through a press release, so I think we\u2019ve been cut off by the Department of the Interior,\u201d she quipped.<\/p>\n

Murkowski also expressed frustration over one of the main justifications behind pulling the Arctic areas from the plan \u2014 a lack of industry interest \u2014 one she sees as a self-fulfilling prophecy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a circular, hypocritical position to take that somehow or other the reason they did this was because there was lack of interest. Keep in mind that when you are exploring you\u2019re looking beyond what happens in this five-year window, and particularly in the Arctic where development just takes so much longer than most anywhere else,\u201d Murkowski said. \u201cIn order to attract interest in the leases themselves industry needs to know that they will be made available. It is amazing to me that they actually put that in writing, that one of the reasons is there is lack of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shell and ConocoPhillips relinquished federal Chukchi leases last spring after the former cut its Arctic exploration program off Alaska in 2015, citing high costs and regulatory uncertainty.<\/p>\n

She introduced legislation this summer to mandate annual lease sales in federal waters off of Alaska\u2019s North Slope and will likely do so again, she said.<\/p>\n

The House passed the Midnight Rules Relief Act Nov. 17, a bill aimed to give the next Congress a workaround against regulatory actions in the last 60 days of a presidency. Rep. Don Young called for the Senate to take up the \u201ccommon sense proposal,\u201d as he characterized it in a release from his office, but the odds of it moving further would not seem great at this point.<\/p>\n

The delegation will also certainly push President-elect Donald Trump to begin reversing the Democrat plan as soon he takes office.<\/p>\n

The five-year lease plan is also subject to annual reviews. However, changing a final plan entails its own, up to three-year, environmental review. Murkowski described that course of action as \u201cpainfully long, but it would allow for a process where we can get these Arctic leases back online.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legislative route would seem to be the simplest and most direct remedy for Republicans especially given they will again hold both chambers of Congress \u2014 albeit barely in the Senate \u2014 and the White House.<\/p>\n

What could end up as a 52-seat Republican majority in the Senate after a runoff election in Louisiana still leaves Democrats holding the ability to filibuster. And it\u2019s unlikely they will go quietly on Arctic environmental issues that have become a hot political topic and will be a part of Obama\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cNuking\u201d the filibuster has been a topic among conservative circles, but Sen. Dan Sullivan\u2019s Chief of Staff Joe Balash has said he does not see that happening in the new Congress.<\/p>\n

Regulatory changes by the Trump administration are almost a sure bet to be met with lawsuits, too, as Republicans have done with Endangered Species Act listings for polar bears and other marine mammal protections in Alaska.<\/p>\n

Murkowski said the need for Arctic energy activity will still be imperative for the delegation to impart on the new administration\u2019s leadership team. She is going to use her committee position to advance that message to upcoming Interior agency appointees and affirm their commitment on the issue for confirmation support, she said.<\/p>\n

\n

Cook Inlet<\/strong><\/p>\n

While much of the focus on the federal offshore oil and gas leasing plan has centered on the Arctic, Alaska was not completely cut out. The plan calls for a single Cook Inlet sale in 2021.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of Cook Inlet is state waters, but the southern portion of the Inlet is under federal jurisdiction. The lease plan states that ample considerations were given to protect the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whale population and other marine wildlife in selecting the leasable areas, and it notes the significant amount of existing oil and gas infrastructure already in place to support potential exploration without significant additional development.<\/p>\n

Bob Shavelson, executive director of the Alaska-based environmental group Cook Inletkeeper, contends a lack of interest in the Southcentral basin has been proven over the prior three federal sales that have garnered no industry bids.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re wasting tens of millions of dollars to study and hold lease sales in Cook Inlet, when instead we should be exploring renewable energy options in federal waters,\u201d Shavelson said in a formal statement.<\/p>\n

He noted the region\u2019s extremely high tides as a prime energy source that continues to go unharnessed.<\/p>\n

\n

Energy package<\/strong><\/p>\n

Murkowski was more upbeat about her omnibus energy reform bill that is in a House-Senate conference committee, the final negotiations before heading to the president\u2019s desk<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in the process now of making offers and counteroffers (between House and Senate conferees) and so my hope is that in these next few days we\u2019ll make some good progress and be able to take this up when we get back from Thanksgiving,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

There have been roughly 75 meetings over less than three months on the Energy Policy Modernization Act, her signature piece of legislation \u2014 also supported by ranking Energy and Natural Resources Democrat from Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell \u2014 Murkowski noted.<\/p>\n

No one on the conference committee is interested in pushing a bill that is likely to get vetoed and nothing in the Senate version has been \u201cflagged as veto bait,\u201d she described.<\/p>\n

Murkowski pushed back against some Republican interests in Washington, D.C., that have suggested since the election the party should focus on pushing a new energy bill through the next Congress after gaining control of the White House.<\/p>\n

She emphasized that moving contentious legislation through the Senate will not be easier next year, as the 60-vote majority will still be needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s very important to recognize that we\u2019ve not only spent two years building a product that has been very broadly supported, but it\u2019s a longer story because it\u2019s been nine years now since we\u2019ve done any energy reform, so wrapping this up right now I think is very important,\u201d Murkowski said. \u201cI am continuing to push and be optimistic and hopefully will have more to report when I\u2019m back into session after the Thanksgiving break, but this is too important to Alaska; I think it\u2019s too important to the country and we\u2019ve done it the right way and I think that needs to be recognized as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Elwood Brehmer is a reporter for the Alaska Journal of Commerce and can be reached at elwood.brehmer@alaskajournal.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 Republicans have options to counteract the Obama administration\u2019s move to pull Arctic waters from the federal offshore oil and gas lease plan, but they are far from immediate. When the Interior Department released its 2017-2022 outer continental shelf, or OCS, lease plan document on Nov. 18 sans sales in Alaska\u2019s Beaufort and Chukchi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"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":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-9319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9319","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\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9319"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}