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?
