No subject is more important to Alaska than energy. The discovery of oil on the Kenai Peninsula in the 1950s helped secure support for statehood, and the flow of oil from the North Slope through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline has been the primary driver of Alaska’s private sector economy since 1977. At the same, Alaskans around the state struggle to heat their homes and can only wince at the prices at the pump for their car, snow machine, ATV, or skiff. Nationally, for our country to be competitive in the international marketplace and secure from foreign threats, we need to be much less dependent on foreign oil. Alaska can provide solutions to all of these problems.

Oil and Gas

Prudhoe Bay, the largest single North American onshore oil field has produced nearly 15 billion barrels of oil since 1977. Though peak production came in 1989, today it still provides approximately 400,000 barrels/day. Today’s total North Slope production average just below 650,000 barrels/day, or about 12 percent of total U.S. domestic production. As these fields decline at a rate of 6 to 7 percent per year, we must find new oil to keep the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) operating with safe and economic margins. Alaskans and technology developed in Alaska has for years set the standard for responsible development through decreasing footprints, horizontal drilling and spill recovery techniques and technology. With Alaska know how, we can continue the state’s history of providing energy to the nation.

ANWR

The easiest and safest way to add more oil to TAPS has been staring us in the face for more than 30 years. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) holds up to 9 billion barrels of recoverable oil and sits just east of Prudhoe Bay infrastructure. Using today’s small footprint and directional drilling technology, we can safely access this valuable reserve.

OCS

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) estimates the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) adjacent to Alaska holds 26 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 130 trillion cubic feet of gas. The lion’s share of these reserves can be found in Chukchi and Beaufort Seas just off Alaska’s North Slope. While a handful of exploration wells were drilled in these areas in the late 1980s and early 1990s, development has been halted time and again by lack of government coordination and litigation.

Alaska also deserves the same share of revenue from development off our coast as the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico do, 37.5 percent. Communities adjacent to offshore development bear the risks and impacts of development and deserve an equitable share of the revenue to pay for these costs. With just a 50-year history as a state, Alaskans remember well the lessons of our fight for statehood. At the time, some in Washington believed Alaska would not survive as a state because of its limited economic base. As a result of this dynamic, both the Statehood Act and the Statehood Compact feature the understanding that Alaska would rely on natural resource and energy development and would need a generous share of revenue from development on federal lands. Although Alaska’s economy is diversifying, much of our economy still depends on natural resource development and the revenues from it that fund over 85 percent of our state budget. Ensuring a fair share of federal revenue from offshore development will be critical

NPR-A:

The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) lies west of Prudhoe Bay and across the Colville River. Set aside as a Naval Petroleum Reserve in the 1920s, development of its oil and gas reserves has been frustratingly slow. Recent estimates indicate it holds 1 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Gasline:

Alaskans have worked for decades to bring the 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves from the Prudhoe Bay and surrounding reservoirs to market. Supplemented by the larger reserves from the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, NPR-A and ANWR, an Alaska gas pipeline to tidewater in Valdez or to an Alberta hub could supply at least a half century’s worth of clean-burning natural gas to North American markets. Few things will provide as steady a foundation for state revenue and the private sector economy as construction and operation of a gas pipeline.