We may live in a crazy, crazy world, but when it comes to energy here in Alaska, we try to keep things real simple-like: Oil comes from the north, and natural gas comes from the south. Of course, in truth, there’s plenty of natural gas up on the North Slope as well – “large volumes,” according to the federal government – but as yet, we don’t have the means of getting it to the folks who need it. It’s a reality we hope to change in the future, to be sure, but for now, Alaska’s natural gas is used (basically) just by Alaskans. And the vast majority of it comes from the Cook Inlet’s 28 producing gas fields in Southcentral.

Now, for folks who don’t know, the Cook Inlet (and not the North Slope) is considered the birthplace of Alaskan oil and gas — with the first commercial discovery of oil taking place in the Swanson River field in 1957. Today, the buzzword is gas, and these fields help provide the region with reliable energy for electrical power generation and heating. It’s also gas that’s helped spawn and support Alaska’s petrochemical industry – an industry that churns out the fertilizer (especially urea fertilizer, which has more nitrogen than all the rest) that farmers use to put food on America’s table.

So that’s the back-story. What’s the front one? Well, flipping through the Anchorage Daily News this morning, we come across a lovely piece filed by Elizabeth Bluemink reporting on a new analysis released this week by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. Turns out Cook Inlet’s got a ton of available natural gas.

Despite recent public debate about future natural gas shortages in Southcentral Alaska, the Cook Inlet area contains enough known natural gas to supply the region’s energy needs for a decade or longer, according to a new study by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.

The department’s staff reviewed data from the 28 producing gas fields in Cook Inlet and estimated that roughly 1.14 trillion cubic feet of gas in those fields remains to be tapped.

According to EIA, 88.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas is delivered to Alaska’s consumers each year. Which means 1.14 trillion cubic feet of Cook Inlet gas – and just Cook Inlet gas, mind you — can keep our state humming for another 13 years. The complete Alaska DNR report, incidentally, can be found here. One sentence in particular, maybe a throw-away line to some, struck us as especially worthwhile in the report:

It will be critical for all stakeholders to recognize the significant impediments that will hinder development of the remaining gas resource in the Cook Inlet basin, and work together to overcome them.

Naturally, the impediments about which it speaks are plain to anyone with even a passing interest in responsibly developing Alaska’s natural resources: lawsuits, federal access restrictions, federal wilderness laws, and byzantine state, local and federal permitting rules. That’s true not only in Cook Inlet, as we know – but throughout the state, both onshore and offshore.

But we’ll leave those gripes for another post. Today, the news is good: Lots of gas for Alaskans in Alaska, and a ton more energy to offer the nation in the future – if those in power in Anchorage, Juneau, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. allow us to step up and deliver it.