By Kassie Andrews — September 26, 2023
“The actions of Alaska policy makers, led by the governor, are eradicating the free-market principles in our state. A media blackout on the problem has left only citizen-led initiatives driving the train to truth. We the People Alaska publishes an eye-opening substack on many of these topics.”
Alaska’s economy runs on oil and gas. Additionally, oil revenues have accounted for up to 90% of our General Fund revenue. Amid its resource abundance, however, Alaska has a big and growing governmental problem—mostly in Washington, D.C., and increasingly, in local governments trying to appease their federal masters.
Alaska has been in a production decline trend since 1988 when the state accounted for 25 percent of U.S. domestic production. Presently, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) is running at a quarter of its capacity (485K barrels per day).
The decline is not for lack of resource, as indicated in part from the proposed Willow Project, which would add 180K/d in 2028 to increase overall TAPS deliveries by 13 percent. Santos Pikka Phase I is expected to add 80k/d in 2026, according to the Alaska Department of Revenue – Tax Division.
Willow Project
Recently, the Conoco Phillips Willow Project has been sanctioned in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The largest oil development project in Alaska in decades was met with fierce opposition from outside environmental groups. The project was pulled back for insertion of language from President Biden’s Executive Order 13990, establishing the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (SC-GHG).
Biden’s compromise was an alternative that promises to leave 53 million barrels in the ground. The option to not develop our resources is in violation of Article VIII—Natural Resources of the Alaska Constitution: “It is the policy of the State to encourage the settlement of its land and the development of its resources by making them available for maximum use consistent with the public interest.”
The “public interest” is hardly about Alaska and climate change. A bit of extra warmth from any cause is welcomed year-round in this state, particularly since the “greenhouse signal” is oriented toward winter nights. Moreover, Alaska emits around one hundredth of one percent of global GHG emissions, calculated by multiplying the state’s 0.8 percent of U.S. emissions times the U.S. share of global emissions of 12 percent.
Willow has now moved the yard marker and will be an example for every other resource development project on federal lands, while simultaneously creating a fictitious value to SC-GHG.
Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, has been the ringleader in all of this. Her nomination as secretary was advanced out of committee by Alaska United States Senator Lisa Murkowski, and she was confirmed by both Alaska US Senators Murkowski and Dan Sullivan. Most Alaska oil and gas executives endorsed Lisa for reelection in 2022, a story of pragmatism gone wrong.
Natural Gas for Alaska
Alaska’s (governmental) oil problem is also a natural gas problem. In Anchorage, the majority of power and heat comes from gas. In the last couple of years, the state has been fed a narrative of a looming natural gas shortage in the Cook Inlet basin with ideas floating around recently to import gas.
In 2011, USGS estimated that Cook Inlet Region contained 20 trillion cubic feet of gas (TCF) with a 95% probability of 5 TCF being proved (economic). That is a lot of gas, with proved reserves representing a half-century of usage in the state (primarily Anchorage) at present consumption rates.
Regional gas is supplied to ENSTAR, which was bought out in 2022 by TriSummit Utilities, owned by two Canadian public investment managers, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP) being one of them. According to TriSummit’s 2022 ESG report,
While our net-zero commitment excludes subsequently acquired assets, such as our pending acquisition of ENSTAR Natural Gas Company and Cook Inlet Natural Gas Storage Alaska, we will strive to bring our emissions reducing mindset to bear as we grow….
Chugach Corporation, the Anchorage area electric utility, uses one fourth of the gas produced from the Cook Inlet. Sentiments from Chugach executives are that natural gas is a “transitional fuel” that can be phased out. As if we desire to sell our souls to the wildly unreliable and expensive renewables.
Since losing two seats to the NGO-led green movement in the Chugach board elections last spring, the renewable energy propaganda in the newsletter is being ramped up as Alaska risks becoming cold and dark. It happened in Texas, and it can happen here.
Governor Dunleavy Problem
Instead of pushing for responsible development of natural gas in the Cook Inlet basin, Governor Mike Dunleavy has plans to turn it into a CO2 carbon capture & storage dumping ground. The Cook Inlet is one of the largest geological sequestration locations on the US west coast. Carbon management legislation, the top priority for the Dunleavy Administration in the 2023-2024 session, was fast tracked and passed 58-2 in a majority Republican legislature.
The scheme was sold as a major revenue source for Alaska, but the fiscal notes were blank. When representatives faced backlash from their constituents, they went as far as to pen opinion pieces claiming that carbon management was “Not ESG.”
Surprisingly, in the 2021-2022 session, Governor Dunleavy introduced a bill for Renewable Portfolio Standards for utilities. This bill would require certain regulated utilities to “derive increasing percentages of the utility’s net electricity sales from clean energy resources in order to minimize costs to consumers and minimize the state’s carbon emissions.” This bill didn’t progress; still, on September 30, 2022, Governor Dunleavy established the Office of Energy Innovation.
On February 23, 2023, Governor Dunleavy established the Alaska Energy Security Task Force. Then on May 25, at the second annual Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference, he signed a bill permanently extending the state’s renewable energy grant fund.
At the same time, Governor Dunleavy unveiled The Alaska Standard Inaugural Sustainability Report wherein it is said: “Alaska stands ready to lead the energy transition.” This report proudly pledged allegiance in a disturbing attempt to explain how Alaska is aligned with the United Nations SDGs.
Alaska Sovereignty at Risk
In a state where oil revenues account for up to 90% of tax revenues, we are obliterating any chance Alaska has at sovereignty. Then again, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled the legislature can raid the largest Sovereign Wealth Fund in the nation, the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, which is owned by the citizens, to fund the Jabba the Hut-sized government.
Alaska policy makers, led by the governor, are eradicating the free-market principles in our state. A media blackout on the problem has left only citizen-led initiatives driving the train to truth. We the People Alaska publishes an eye-opening substack on many of these topics.
We need to restore the power of the grand jury; this constitutional right as of one year ago has been halted. Why else would the court rule in violation of Alaska’s constitution if not rife with corruption – the very corruption the grand jury sought to investigate?
It is time for policy reform at all levels of Alaskan government. Overall, we need a critical mass of folks asking the tough questions. Voter apathy is a real issue in this state – turnout for the Chugach electric utility board was only 16%, for example.
I don’t recall anyone asking for any of this to be done to us, however who you choose to represent you and your involvement at the lowest level will mean deciding between food and electricity.
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Kassie Andrews is a long time Alaska resident with a particular interest in natural resources and energy policy. This is her first blog at MasterResource.
Pantheon’s Kodiak and Ahpun fields will add almost 200k/d to the TAPS. The fields are on state land right next to the pipeline. Together, they are 3X the size of Willow. I don’t see the State causing any issues.
Surely Alaska’s Governor is not so technically-illiterate that he believes that green nonsense about carbon dioxide being harmful? It is about 0.04% of the atmosphere, and we need much MORE of it if we are to eliminate the risk of it again falling towards to level at which ALL LIFE on Earth would die.
There is absolutely NO PROOF that carbon dioxide has anything to do with global warming, which is entirely natural in cause. I wonder whether the Governor has EVER checked those predictions of catastrophic climate disaster, because NOT A SINGLE SUCH PREDICTION HAS EVER COME TRUE. Not even one! And meanwhile, what most of the earth urgently needs is a reliable supply of life-giving OIL!
Well said. I can’t believe that the US would subscribe to all the false IPCC predictions on CO2 lead global warming.
I did my own study of the “Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (SC-GHG)” and found it to be slightly less than the social cost of leprechauns. /sarc
Actually the “Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (SC-GHG)” is far lower than that of leprechauns! The little imps are always beguiling the innocent with tales of pots of gold and feeding them foodstuffs high in sugars and highly processed carbs with little or no nutritional value!
The SC-GHG of CO2 should actually be a negative number, as the Magic Gas is wholly beneficial to the biosphere! “They’re always after me Lucky Charms!”
Just imagine Alka Gov going out and saving all those Alaskans from the ginormance 2 degrees of warming each winter day.
Meanwhile also telling them that payments from the Permanent Fund Dividend of $2,622 plus an added $662 to every man, woman & child will not be made anymore.
That oil is Evil.
The carbon capture legislation is a simple money grab, allowing anyone to get a federal subsidy by storing CO2. Native tribes in the Lower 48 spearheaded the scam on native lands by diddling when and where they logged their lands. Nobody is forced to do anything. Feds are happy as it plusses up their numbers a bit but doesn’t touch anyone up here in any substantive manner.
Cook Inlet has a number of well known mostly empty natural gas reservoirs. A couple of them have been used to store natural gas for Inlet utilities (Chugach and Enstar). The use of a few more depleted reservoirs to store captured CO2 is no big deal.
Politics of this is interesting, as it was brought to the attention of the Legislature and Governor by Buzzy Peltola, husband of our recently elected congress critter Mary Peltola. Both are Natives. Buzzy brought the money grab from the Lower 48. As far as I can tell, there is no downside to the legislation. While not vigorously supported, it was not passionately opposed, though there were (and still are) a lot of skeptics.
Buzzy killed himself a week or so ago trying to fly an overweight aircraft out of a hunting site in the Bush. Too much moose meat and antler racks. He took off but landed a lot sooner than he wanted to. He survived for about an hour after the hard landing. Cheers –
I wonder if this has any bearing on matters?
“”Biden admin quietly released study showing green energy receives far more subsidies than fossil fuels””
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-admin-quietly-released-study-showing-green-energy-receives-far-more-subsidies-fossil-fuels
They’re going to need the taxes fossil fuels generate…
From the linked article: “”We are subsidizing the danger. As we’ll hear today, the United States subsidizes the fossil fuel industry with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said during a hearing in May. “In the United States, by some estimates taxpayers pay about $20 billion dollars every year to the fossil fuel industry. What do we get for that? Economists generally agree: not much.””
As far as I know, taxpayers are *not* paying subsidies to fossil fuel companies.
Oil and gas companies pay money into the U.S. Treasury in the form of income taxes. Passing a law giving a tax break to an oil or gas company does not mean that taxpayers give the oil and gas companies money/subsidies, it means that the oil and gas companies pay less money into the U.S. Treasury than they would have paid if the taxbreak law wasn’t passed.
Now I cannot account for every dollar spent by the federal government, but I know of no substantial amount of money that is being paid to oil and gas companies by American taxpayers. Oil and gas companies give money to the federal government, not the other way around.
If this is not the case, I assume someone will show me the error of my ways.
As someone who has been to Alaska five times, including four times working as a Mining Exploration Geologist and once as a Caribou hunter, the tone of the Alaska constituent described in this report is totally outside my experience interacting with Alaskans. Forced to choose between the report being wrong and Alaska population experiencing a Greenie downward spiral, I think it is the latter. Who would have thunk it?
Every aspect of Alaskan history is an incredible farce. By writing a check to a monarch in Moscow one gang of looters can control the destiny of total strangers thousands of miles away from the buyer or the seller? The Russians fool around on the coasts and rivers and that makes its entirety theirs to sell? Who asked the Tlingits and Haidas and Athabascans and Yupiks and Inupiats if they were going to go along with this? The expansion of the original 13 colonies, as illegitimate as they were, has led to an apparently irreversible injustice. Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, California, in fact, all the post-revolutionary acquisitions are more negative than any Russian-Ukrainian spat. Yankees will defend the expansion as bringing “civilization” and needed new technology to the small populations of savages. It’s really just theft and domination. A shameful but integral part of US history.
You forgot all of the Canadian Arctic, “given” to a fur trading company by the King of England, for whatever reason the Innuit were not aware….
That’s pretty much the history of the world, GC! Stealing land from others and subjecting the survivors to slavery or worse was the paradigm for nearly all of human history; at least until the radical Christian zealots tried to put a stop to the slave trade!
Thank God we are now returning to Law of the Jungle again! I’m rooting for the criminals in Washington to overthrow the criminals in Moscow! As long as the criminals in Beijing don’t interfere too much, our DC crooks should be able to loot and plunder the vast resources of Siberia! Think of how much grift and graft US politicians will be able to pull in selling access to the highest bidders! Of course, they’ll have to come up with another Forever War to placate the MIC; maybe we can go after Oceania next!
What did the Russians ever do to you?
The “radical Christian zealots” used religion as a justification for subjugating whoever they wished. It was the Pope himself that divided the western hemisphere into Spanish and Portuguese spheres that led to the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494.
The religious thing doesn’t always work. The Saudis, ultimate protectors of Islam, have never succumbed to the lures and vices of the Christian west, using them for their own purposes. They have had control of the world’s production of oil, a fact that insures alliances and maintains an economic barrier to invasion, despite the fact that “democracy” is an unknown to them. They are even at war with Yemen but no one in the west seems to care. Maybe the Yemenis need a Zelensky.
The Pope avoided what would have been a huge, disastrous war. Both sides were priming for a fight, as their empires continued to rub against each other at the borders, and only submitted their request for arbitration as to appear to be searching for peace in their time, all the while preparing for war.
Much to their surprise, and to the dismay of the money changers and arms dealers who who benefit from an open war, the Pope’s proposal was acceptable, and each side came to their senses and the war was avoided.
Maybe the Pope could help out between Moscow and Kyiv, yes?
And of course none of this has any bearing on the AGW/energy conversation.
1494, huh. That’s a lot of conspiracy theories to keep up with from then to now! A monumental effort, no doubt.
GC says:”They have had control of the world’s production of oil,…”
They don’t or at least wouldn’t if folks like you let places like Alaska drill baby drill as much as they wanted.
Are going to castigate the Iroquois for wiping out the Huron? Or is it only western civilization you hate?
Well, that’s what happens with an open border – strangers come in to enjoy everything you have worked hard to arrange and then start screwing it up.
You do an excellent job of reciting the ‘colonialism’ mantra as though such action were limited to the US. I suppose historical literacy is not a requirement of the left. I suspect you live on ‘stolen land’ but take no action to return it to the rightful owners.
“I suspect you live on ‘stolen land’”
There is probably a pretty good chance of that being true. Most land was stolen from someone, down through history. Even American Indians are guilty of stealing other people’s land.
“It’s really just theft and domination. A shameful but integral part of US history.”
Of “world” history.
Any government that stands in the way of fossil fuel production or nuclear production should be banned from using them. Not just the ones who vote for this nonsense rather all government workers. It is not acceptable for them to use the things they want to take from the rest of us, they must be the first to give it all up. Even the ones who don’t believe in this nonsense have to give it all up because they have sat on their backside and gone along.
The solution? Invite Governor Dunleavy to a sit-down to discuss State issues, in the dead of winter, in a remote location that is suddenly without heating at the time of his visit. Cancel all flights and ways out of there for two weeks. Listen to the tune change, and if it doesn’t, strand him there all winter, just like the rest of Alaska.
I thought Alaska was a red state. It just goes to show you the truth of Dan Bongino’s rule: “Most Republicans are really Democrats, but no Democrat is really a Republican.”
From the article: “Surprisingly, in the 2021-2022 session, Governor Dunleavy introduced a bill for Renewable Portfolio Standards for utilities. This bill would require certain regulated utilities to “derive increasing percentages of the utility’s net electricity sales from clean energy resources in order to minimize costs to consumers and minimize the state’s carbon emissions.””
Talk about wishful thinking! Right. “Clean” energy will minimize costs to consumers! No, “clean” energy will increase the costs to consumers. It happens every time it is tried. What planet is this governor living on?
Unwarranted fear of CO2 has driven our lawmakers insane. It causes them to do all the wrong things. Our enemies must be thrilled at the stupidity shown by American politicans.
You people in Alaska voted these clowns into office. It’s time to vote them out of office. Vote for someone with a little bit of sense next time. Or suffer the consequences of a failed economy.