Long overdue and considerable developments have recently been made toward finally access the job-creating energy reserves that remain under the federal government’s lock-and-key along the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The Interior Dept.’s bureaucracy that oversees offshore energy production – MMS – gave a green light for responsible production in the beginning of December, as we’ve written about.

But that’s not stopping those who are opposed to creating jobs and economic activity through accessing the estimated 15 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from thwarting these commonsense efforts. Predictably, they’re heading straight to the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Reuters reports this under the headline “Shell offshore oil drill plan in Alaska challenged”:

Environmental and Alaska Native groups have filed a legal challenge seeking to overturn U.S. approval of Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s plans to drill up to three wells this year off the shore of Alaska, representatives said on Wednesday.

Late on Tuesday, the coalition of groups filed its challenge to drilling in the remote Chukchi Sea. The petition in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals seeks to void the U.S. Minerals Management Service’s Dec. 7 approval of Shell’s plan for wells about 60 miles off Alaska’s northwestern coast.

Shell fired back, though, with actual facts, substance and coherence:

“It’s our belief the MMS was thorough in its technical and environmental evaluation of our 2010 Exploration Plan and that Shell has demonstrated its ability to operate in the Arctic in an environmentally responsible manner,” Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said in a statement. “A tremendous amount of work went into writing and evaluating this permit and we fully expect the MMS to be successful in defending its approval.”

Smith said “Shell has already completed four years of successful seismic and shallow hazard work in the Chukchi Sea – an area that could be home to some of the most prolific, undiscovered hydrocarbon basins in the U.S.“

Thankfully, Alaskans have a fighter for jobs and secure energy as their chief executive. UPI reports this about Gov. Sean Parnell’s ongoing efforts to expand Alaska’s energy economy under the headline “Drill, baby, drill, says Alaska’s Parnell”:

“We will draw on that timeless Alaskan strength and ingenuity to make it happen,” he said. “We will not settle for any less than maximizing recovery of Alaska’s gas for Alaskans’ benefit.”

He pointed to potential oil and gas discoveries in Alaska’s outer continental shelf as a further source of state revenue in a stagnant economy still crippled by the recession.

“I have made exploring and developing the OCS our priority,” he said.

It’s been a long time coming, but finally substantial and measurable progress is being made toward finally unlocking the job-creating energy resources below the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Imagine that? Well, you should. And can.

The Alaska Journal of Commerce’s Tim Bradner peels the layers back in “Shell one step closer to drilling in Beaufort, Chukchi seas”:

Shell Oil is a step closer to testing oil and gas prospects in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas this summer.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued a draft air quality permit for Shell’s 2010 exploration program in the Alaska Chukchi Sea, and the company says it is now “guardedly optimistic” that it will be able to clear hurdles in time to drill in the summer open-water season in the Arctic, a Shell official said Jan. 8.

Pete Slaiby, Shell’s vice president for Alaska, said the agency’s release of a final draft air permit, actually a second version of an initial draft released last fall, is a positive step in Shell’s efforts to drill on leases for which it paid $2.2 billion in a 2008 outer continental lease sale in the Chukchi Sea.

Shell’s Slaiby describes EPA’s commonsense decision to move forward in the permitting process as a “big step”:

“The announcement is good news, but the length of the public comment period combined with likely appeals still pushes the boundaries of our ability to drill in 2010,” Slaiby said. “Obviously, the windows in which we have to operate are limited and a decision to move forward is an extremely expensive one. We will continue to monitor our options in the days ahead as we get closer to making that critical decision.”

Alaska’s two senators, Begich, a Democrat, and Republican Lisa Muskowski, provided important support for the permit, as did Republican Gov. Sean Parnell, Slaiby said.

Expanded access to Alaska’s sizable energy reserves, though, could all be for naught if excessive taxes in the state discourage production and drive businesses overseas. Gov. Parnell understands the need to balance responsible production with a tax code that will promote jobs and economic activity in the state.

The Associated Press reports this today under the headline “Alaska governor pushes changes to state energy tax”:

Gov. Sean Parnell said Thursday that he wants to give oil and gas companies greater incentives to do business in the state, a plan he says will boost production and create potentially hundreds of new jobs for Alaskans.

The plan comes amid forecasts of slumping oil production on Alaska’s North Slope and concerns by some Republican lawmakers that a state tax on oil and gas production – passed two years ago at the urging of then-Gov. Sarah Palin – is doing more harm than good and hindering new development.

Parnell said the recommendations strike a balance between protecting Alaska’s interests and declaring the state open for business. While the state currently has billions of dollars in budget reserves, Parnell said its economy is struggling and he’s trying to create more jobs and opportunities. The estimated hundreds of millions of dollars in additional tax credits are a small price to pay, he said, for a state that runs on oil and gas revenue.

And Sean Cockerham at the Anchorage Daily News reports this in a story entitled “Parnell seeks investment incentives for oil companies”:

Parnell said Thursday he doesn’t want the tax rate lowered, but does want tax credits for investments. His announcement comes as the oil companies and many Republican state legislators maintain Alaska’s oil taxes are too high and are driving away investment. This will be a battlefront in the legislative session which begins next week and in this year’s governor’s race, with candidates running on opposite sides of the oil tax issue.

Parnell said a new Department of Revenue study found the oil-tax system generally works well and that oil companies are increasing investment and jobs in the state. But he said there are incentives the state can give to create more economic activity.

“The numbers speak for themselves. Investment has been up in the industry. But frankly it could be better, that’s why we are offering incentives and credits,” Parnell said.

The Dept. of Revenue study on oil taxes can be viewed HERE.

Bottom line: Increasing access to Alaskan energy, while keeping taxes low for anyone that uses energy, is key to strengthening our national and economic security. Folks in Alaska overwhelmingly understand this. And a clear majority of Americans are realizing this, too.

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.

While our elected leadership in Alaska continues to fight to unlock billions of barrels of job-creating energy that remains under de facto moratorium by the administration, the media elite in Washington continues to celebrate the “courage” of bureaucrats who go above and beyond the call of duty to put out “ambitious and innovative” research (with taxpayer resources) designed to make it more difficult for Alaskans to access their own energy.

The Washington Post, in its weekly ode-to-the-unappreciated-bureaucrat series, profiles how one such USGS staffer has worked relentlessly over the past few years to create a statutory justification for preventing the responsible development of energy – on the grounds that what’s good for Alaska’s economy is somehow inimical to the interests of Alaska’s wildlife.

For Leslie Holland-Bartels of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the inclusion of Alaska’s polar bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act was a great accomplishment.

But the 2008 federal designation also signaled much more — the broader scientific linkage between global warming and significant changes to wildlife, critical ecosystems and biodiversity.

Following their discovery, many environmental groups wanted to use the polar bear findings as justification for stronger climate change rules. Although these proposals were rejected by President Bush and then by the Obama administration, the Interior department has proposed using the data to designate more than 200,000 square miles of land, sea and ice along the northern coast of Alaska as a critical polar bear habitat.

We all care about the well-being of our wildlife, our environment and our natural resources. There can and must be an appropriate balance to protect them all, while also ensuring that economic activity is not prevented in the process.

And that’s exactly what Gov. Sean Parnell is fighting for, as we’ve written about previously on this blog. He also understands that Alaska jobs and economic security cannot be compromised.

Dan Joling of the Associated Press quotes Parnell in a piece under the headline “Alaska fights to reverse polar bear listing:”

“We’re going to take every step we can to fight for Alaskan jobs and our economy,” he says.

And at the Resource Development Council’s 30^th annual conference, Parnell told the crowd this (AUDIO):

“The Endangered Species Act is not a land-use planning tool and must not be used to complicate, delay, and ultimately halt energy exploration and production in Alaska,” Governor Parnell said. “We’ll take Alaska’s fight to the mat to make sure the ESA is used only to protect species threatened with extinction and not as a tool to lock up our land.”