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.

It’s not every day (or millennium) that we get to comment on some good news on this blog, a function not of our generally misanthropic outlook on life, but rather: the fact that good examples of good news are so darn tough to come by.

But there’s just no way to pooh-pooh the breaking news today from the Interior Department. Turns out that after five years of back-and-forth in the courts, in Congress, and in and around the executive branch, Shell has finally been told that its offshore energy plan in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea is ready to go – paving the way for the company to begin developing exploratory wells next year on two leases in the area.

The Associated Press has the most thorough wrap-up:

A federal agency announced approval Monday of a plan by Shell Offshore, Inc.’s to drill exploratory wells next year on two leases in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s north coast … The Minerals Management Service said Shell must meet certain conditions, including federal air and water quality rules and marine mammal protection requirements.

Shell Alaska vice president Pete Slaiby called it a positive step toward drilling next year.

Keep in mind that these areas were first included for lease by the Interior Department way back in 2002 – and as readers of this blog should know by now, tracts don’t end up in the five-year plan by accident, not without years of pre-study, analysis and, unfortunately, litigation.

All of which is to say: It’s been a long, hard fight for Shell up here, but it seems to be one they’re willing to continue. Seriously: This is a company that has invested billions of dollars to create permanent jobs here and work with and accommodate native communities – all for the opportunity to risk even more money in the pursuit of American energy resources offshore. But no matter how hard bureaucrats in Washington or judges in San Francisco make it to do that work, these guys just keep coming back for more. Good for Shell. And good for Alaska’s Senate delegation for recognizing how good a piece of news this is:

Alaska’s two U.S. senators praised the announcement. Republican Lisa Murkowski called it an encouraging sign that Alaska’s oil and natural gas resources will continue to play a major role in America’s energy security.

Democrat Mark Begich said the decision showed that Interior Secretary Salazar and the Obama Administration recognize the importance of Alaska’s abundant offshore oil and gas resources, including safeguards for important subsistence resources.

Sure, we can talk about how this is just a drop in the bucket; how so much more offshore acreage in Alaska remains under agency lock-and-key; how Shell, BP and others continue to get the run-around in the Chukchi; how the plan approved by Interior essentially forbids exploration activities for the entire months of September and October. But we won’t do that. Today’s a day to tip a cap, and so consider this a formal doff.

UPDATE: You know what they say: When it rains, it pours. Just a day and a half after Interior gave the go-ahead for Shell in the Beaufort, the agency finally came through with an announcement today that the company’s environmental plan for the Chukchi is “complete” along with it. Here’s the latest from the Anchorage paper:  

The federal Minerals Management Service this week deemed Shell Oil’s application to drill exploration wells in the Chukchi Sea next year to be complete.

That triggers a 30-day deadline for the MMS to review the plan and decide whether to approve it, reject it or require changes.

A previous Shell plan for drilling in the Chukchi was rejected by a federal judge, who ordered a new analysis of the impacts of the drilling.

We weren’t entirely sure this moment would ever arrive – and who knows? It still might not – but in just four days, the comment period on the Interior Department’s five year energy plan for 2010 to 2015, barring hell, high water or holy hand grenades, will come to an end.

It’s a comment period that started in January, was extended by an additional six months by incoming Secretary Ken Salazar, and, if Salazar’s statements today are any indication, it’s a comment period that won’t get us a single step closer to gaining reasonable access to new offshore energy, at least anytime in the near future.

The Washington, D.C.-based trade pub E&E News (subs. req’d) was out first with the gory details:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today said it remains unclear whether offshore leasing plans his agency is crafting will supplant the existing 2007-2012 outer continental shelf program or take effect afterward. …

That [current] plan is in place until 2012. So, in a legal sense, we have until 2012 to redo a plan on the outer continental shelf,” Salazar said this morning. “Whether we take that long or not is something we’ll decide based on the information we collected and the analysis that’s been done during this period. I haven’t yet reached a decision yet on what the next steps are going to be.”

For teachers of seventh grade civics class who previously believed that only the president could execute a pocket veto, observe the maneuver that Secretary Salazar is trying to pull off here. Back in February, when he needlessly extended the comment period by an additional 180 days (on top of the 60 days already established), the real objective was extending the de facto ban on offshore energy exploration beyond the Gulf of Mexico that Congress had kept in place for 27 years, but was forced to let expire in 2008.

Now, with the time for reckoning fast approaching, Salazar informs us that the clock never mattered in the first place. You thought the comment period was six months? Think again: The law says we don’t have to even read those comments for another three years – and assuming we don’t, we’ll have been able to effectively continue the offshore ban that the American people THOUGHT they had gotten Congress to remove in 2008.

Salazar might claim membership in the Democratic party, but, to the extent he decides to sit on these comments and do nothing to accede to the will of the American people (and Congress) on offshore energy exploration, it’ll be quite the undemocratic act, indeed. Let’s hope he doesn’t do that, but let’s prepare as if he will.

More than 3800 miles separate Alaska’s North Slope from the state capital building in Richmond, Virginia. But the distance didn’t seem that far yesterday, as residents of the Old Dominion state were treated to an excellent op-ed piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch about the myriad ways in which Alaskan energy can be leveraged to power, fuel and fund the nation.

Written by Dave Harbour, the former head of the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, current director of CEA Alaska, and someone who has devoted much of his professional life to shining a spotlight on the potential of Alaskan energy, the pieces breaks it all down nice and simple for our friends in the mid-Atlantic. The message? Alaskan energy is real. It’s available. And it’s being completely ignored right now by our political leadership just 120 miles north in Washington, D.C. To wit:

Accounting for three-quarters of our nation’s coastlines, Alaska’s offshore resources exceed those in the Gulf of Mexico. With the giant Prudhoe Bay oilfield and infrastructure, Alaska also has an expert work force needed to produce its abundant resources. But for that to happen, the federal government must take action.

What action must the government take? Well, keep reading the piece and Mr. Harbour comes right out and tells you:

This problem came to a head earlier this year, when a federal court nullified the Interior Department’s current five-year plan, a strategy that included energy in Alaska’s North Aleutian Basin and Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. Fortunately, all that’s needed to reinstate the five-year plan are a few technical changes. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar could quickly make those changes, and unleash a safe search for Alaska’s energy.

Fans of the site will remember that Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell suggested much the same remedy to the current stand-off over the Alaskan OCS in an Anchorage Daily-News op-ed that appeared in June. In that piece, the governor laid out the following plan for Interior secretary Ken Salazar

What can Secretary Salazar do? He can get the current five-year energy program working for Alaska and all of America again. To comply with the court’s ruling, no new field work need be completed nor any new data obtained. Instead, Interior can take a fresh look at “relative environmental sensitivity” through the lens of earlier, field-tested five-year plans.

Sounds pretty easy to us. What’s the reason for the hold up?