In a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Governor Sean Parnell charged the Obama administration with being “openly hostile” to oil-producing states and warned that events in the Middle East and surging gas prices at the pump put America’s economic recovery at risk.
“This is the moment our federal government must re-examine its ‘no new wells’ policy when it comes to oil exploration and development here at home,” Parnell said. “The U.S. foolishly imports more than 63 percent of its crude oil, leaving us vulnerable to economic shock from disruption of oil supplies from the international front.”
Parnell pointed out that for 40 years, Alaska oil has given the U.S. some degree of energy stability. He said in hindsight, building the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline was “positively brilliant.” The pipeline today, which is running at two-thirds empty, could be full and serving as a buffer to events abroad, Parnell said.
“Sometimes Alaskans feel like our state’s potential to help diminish our nation’s reliance on foreign oil is in the ‘unknown’ category here in the Capital,” Parnell said, in reference to the state’s huge oil reserves.
Parnell warned America’s oil supply line from the Middle East and North Africa is at risk, the national debt is $14 trillion and counting, and the nation’s economic recovery is dependent on access to secure, affordable energy.
“Americans’ tax bill to secure Middle East oil has been estimated at $7.3 trillion over the past three decades, half the size of our national debt,” Parnell said.
Parnell stressed that the federal government can do much more to foster oil development at home. He noted Alaska contributes 11 percent of national oil production and although the North Slope’s legacy fields are declining, there is much more oil remaining to be produced if the federal government would allow access to it.
“But Alaska and the Gulf states have been blocked from developing America’s oil by misguided federal policy, much of it aided by misinformation and political agendas,” the Alaska governor charged. “With the Middle East and North Africa a powder keg, and with Americans having to soon pay $4 a gallon at the pump, the federal government’s ‘no new wells’ policy will soon be revealed as our nation’s Achilles’ heel,” Parnell said.
The Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are driving U.S. foreign policy, Parnell declared, by increasing the nation’s dependence on foreign sources of oil.
“In many senses, the State Department is forced into a reactive, mitigating role because of the increasingly hostile stance that the Interior and the EPA have taken to domestic energy exploration and production,” Parnell explained. “These are agencies that can lock down domestic oil with no responsibility for the consequences. They can force America to depend ever more heavily on foreign oil, at enormous cost of lives, tax dollars, and economic opportunity. They do this by delaying leasing, delaying permitting for exploration and development, and by attempting sweeping lock-ups of lands without congressional approval or authority,” Parnell said.
“The Department of Interior in the past few years has acted like a shopaholic with a stolen credit card and a taste for empire building,” Parnell said.
Parnell explained that a case-in-point is Interior’s decision to evaluate 87 million acres of federal land in Alaska and millions elsewhere in the West as potential “wild lands.” That designation, if implemented in Alaska, would lock up oil without Congress having any input at all.
“Putting such a sweeping initiative in motion overnight, without congressional direction and without consulting the affected states or the public, is unfathomable,” Parnell said. “Large areas of Alaska, areas the size of the Eastern Seaboard, are already off limits to resource development.”
Another example: Interior has set aside a section of Alaska larger than California as critical habitat for polar bears. Parnell said that action will lead to endless, costly lawsuits and will have a severe chilling effect on the nation’s ability to produce American energy, making it more reliant on foreign oil.
Parnell also vented over recent EPA decisions that have held back oil development. “In Alaska, an oil company can buy federal leases, spend over $3 billion dollars in permitting and capital costs, apply for an air permit from the EPA and five years later still not get it, when the same permit takes months in the Gulf of Mexico,” the governor said.
Federal inaction in that one case alone has delayed the creation of 54,700 jobs. “The federal agencies won’t call it a moratorium, but if it looks like a moratorium and walks like a moratorium, maybe it is,” Parnell said.
Parnell also pointed out that federal agencies have delayed another oil development known as CD-5 on Alaska’s North Slope by rejecting a vital permit for a bridge and pipeline across the Colville River. As a result, exploration and development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska has been halted.
“So here’s the reality: the most promising federal lands for exploration and development in Alaska are blocked by federal agency action – NPR-A, the Arctic OCS, and the ANWR Coastal Plain,” Parnell said. “These all languish under this federal ‘no new wells’ policy. And that is why I say that the Department of Interior and the EPA are driving U.S. foreign policy because they are driving greater dependence on foreign oil at great cost to Americans.”
Parnell said Alaskans are frustrated as they watch the nation’s fuel prices rise and government debt spiral out of control. “Along with other oil producing states, we wonder why the federal government has become openly hostile to a sector of our economy that has created hundreds of thousands of jobs and produces a commodity we all use every day. Like many Americans, we are asking our federal government, do we matter?”
The governor pointed out that America is the only one of five Arctic nations not exploring for oil in the Arctic Ocean, despite having access to the largest portion of the untapped oil. Seventy percent of the world’s undiscovered oil resources are in the Arctic, and Alaska’s northern coastline gives it access to one-third of those reserves.
“Only the United States, which is sitting on the largest untapped, technically recoverable Arctic oil resources and has the greatest environmental oversight, is sitting it out,” Parnell said.
The governor pleaded, “Let Alaska help put America back to work. Let’s take positive steps to lessen our dependence on foreign oil.”
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