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.

Only one state in the Union produces more American oil each year than Alaska, and no: contrary to conventional wisdom (see below), it’s not Rhode Island. Of course, that honor goes to our friends from Texas – but here’s an interesting nugget for you: For as much oil as Texas produces onshore, even more comes from the state’s adjacent (and federal) Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).

This prolific tract is more commonly known as the Gulf of Mexico – and for the offshore doubters out there, it stands today as a vexing monument to what can be achieved when cutting-edge, space-age technology meets a localized federal energy policy that encourages producers to go out and look around.

Of course, that same technology is available up here in Alaska. What’s lacking, however, is the federal policy piece – one that would finally allow our state to do for the nation (and itself) what states along the Gulf Coast have continued to do, and successfully so, for the better part of three generations.

You can take a look at the numbers for yourself on this phenomenon; they don’t lie. Alaska produced 249,874,000 barrels of oil for American energy consumers in 2008 – not a single drop of it from energy-rich areas along the state’s adjacent federal OCS. And it’s not as if folks have gone out to look for some out there and come back empty-handed. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that as many as 157 billion barrels of oil – 15 ANWRs! – lie ready, willing and able to be gotten above the Arctic Circle – much of that in areas within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

So that’s the policy as it exists today: Yes, there are staggering amounts of energy available for production up here, but no: none of it will be available to create jobs, revenue and opportunity here in the United States. But wait. A column we came across today in the San Luis Obispo (Calif.) Tribune from Earthjustice advisor Buck Parker says it’s “time to correct past wrongs in Arctic oil development.” From the piece:

Salazar should follow the advice of NOAA and hold off permitting new oil and gas activity in the Arctic until we have a better idea of how to respond when oil inevitably leaks and until we know a lot more about Arctic wildlife. … It is not too late for Salazar’s Interior Department to correct course and protect the Arctic Ocean.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but let us reiterate: Not a stitch of oil development has taken place in the Arctic – not because there’s no energy in the area, but because the federal government has done everything in its power (real and perceived) to deny us access to it. Apparently, this point isn’t fully known by this fella from Earthjustice – because, after all, he wouldn’t knowingly mislead his readers into thinking otherwise. Would he?

The full column is probably worth your read, if for no reason than to fully appreciate the lengths to which anti-energy activists will go to convince the American people that oil exploration in Alaska’s OCS is happening right now, that it’s ruining a pristine environment, and that federal officials must act at once to “correct past wrongs” in the region by bringing existing development to an immediate end.

But there’s no need to worry, Mr. Parker. Your apparatchiks in Washington are doing a bang up job at preventing that development as it is.

“The enemy of conventional wisdom,” John Kenneth Galbraith, who coined the term, once wrote, “is not ideas, but the march of events.” And although it doesn’t appear as if the former U.S. ambassador to India was talking about offshore energy’s record of environmental stewardship when he wrote it, that doesn’t make his words any less relevant to an age-old debate that surrounds a fairly simple and straightforward question:

Does energy production offshore pollute our waters? Conventional wisdom might suggest that it does. Can energy production offshore actually help reduce pollution in our waters? Conventional wisdom would suppose that it can’t.

In this case, both would be wrong. We’ll let the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) pick it up from here:

New estimates indicate that the overall amount of petroleum released to the marine environment may be lower than earlier thought. This reflects, in part, advances over the last decade in marine transportation and oil and gas production techniques.

How much “lower than earlier thought” are we talking here? Quite a lot, according to NAS. Turns out that of the measurable hydrocarbon pollution in place in U.S. waters today, 63 percent of it comes from a single, devious source: Mother Nature, in the form of natural seepage. And how much comes from efforts to produce oil and natural gas offshore? Would you believe if it was less than one percent?

Conventional wisdom wouldn’t. Thankfully, the march of events and the efforts of a single man in California are starting to bend the narrative back.  

Go ahead: Just ask a fella named Bruce Allen how hard he’s worked over the years to find folks willing to listen to the facts: He’s testified on Capitol Hill, been published in newspapers across the country, and just this week, even teamed up with The Heritage Foundation to publish a detailed background primer on how increased access to energy offshore would actually help our natural environment, not harm it. From his paper:

The economic benefits from increased domestic hydrocarbon production are well known, but many erroneously assume they come at an environmental cost. In truth, there are opportunities … to achieve substantial environmental benefits from drilling as a consequence of reduced seepage of oil and natural gas into the air and water. Expanded offshore oil and gas production can genuinely be a win-win proposition.

Is it so difficult to understand how this would work? Billions of barrels of oil – and more trillions of units of natural gas – seeps naturally into our nation’s waters each year, literally bursting through the ocean floor and immediately assuming the form of natural pollution.

What if there existed a way – follow us here – that allowed us to access that energy BEFORE it bled out on its own? What if there existed a way to turn a form of pollution into a means of economic revitalization – in so doing, materially reducing the amount of oil that seeps naturally into our nation’s oceans?

Boy, that would be awesome. Wonder if we’ll ever come up with a method for doing 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.

Alaska governor Sean Parnell does not mince words; he wasn’t afraid to stand up for his state’s energy economy and workforce as lieutenant governor, and he’s certainly not slowing down now as the state’s chief executive.

And apparently, he’s not afraid to fly either. This week, the governor will make the 3,300 mile trek from Alaska to Washington, DC, hopefully catching a decent movie along the way, as he embarks upon a busy schedule in the nation’s capital talking up the role that Alaska does, and can continue to, play in securing our nation’s energy future. On the menu? Interior secretary Ken Salazar, a couple folks from the White House, and maybe even the president himself.

The Associated Press reported this today under the headline “Parnell to lobby for OCS drilling in Washington”:

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell will lobby to open the outer continental shelf to oil development during a trip to Washington, D.C., this week.

Parnell will meet with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and other top Obama administration officials during meetings scheduled Wednesday and Thursday.

Parnell urged in a letter to Salazar earlier this month that the federal government should allow offshore oil and gas drilling along Alaska’s northernmost coastline.

Parnell called a responsible outer continental shelf leasing program that respects Alaska Native concerns “vitally important to Alaska and the nation.”

Mr. Parnell has shown to be a leader that keeps his word on working to expand Alaska’s energy access. Earlier this month, the governor told an energy gathering this:

Parnell told the group he’s written Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that he supports offshore drilling, the first battle cry in a fight for the state’s future.

“I will personally lead the charge in pursuit of OCS exploration and development,” he said.

So why is the governor fighting so hard to expand Alaska’s energy potentials? Well, according to the article from the beginning of September, Mr. Parnell said:

“We have so much opportunity for jobs and revenue there that it hasn’t really gotten the spotlight that’s been needed.”

Like a clear majority of Americans, Governor Parnell and most Alaskans understand that increasing energy production – of all forms, in all places – will help stabilize and drive down energy prices and help create good-paying jobs at a time when they’re most needed.