The Kenai and Soldotna Chambers of Commerce held a joint luncheon on Wednesday where the featured speaker was Kara Moriarty with the Alaska Oil & Gas Association.
She began by recapping 2020 in the oil and gas industry, noting that things were not looking great, even before COVID-19 really took hold over the economy: “Even before the pandemic hit in the middle of March, the oil industry was seeing prices start to decline because of this global tussle, if you will, between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Obviously, I don’t know if folks were really tuning in to this at the time, and even though it doesn’t seem like oil is dropping today, oil in the beginning of 2020 was almost $70 a barrel. By the end of February, it had lost $15 a barrel in value. Of course, the pandemic hit and I don’t need to recap what happened.”
Moriarty also mentioned how the oil and gas industry fit into the grand scale of job losses recently: “The industry has been hit hard. Leisure & hospitality were some of the hardest hit, but oil and gas is right up there as well. It’s interesting – PBS – it’s professional and business services, which a lot of those people, engineering firms, consulting firms, a lot of those firms actually help support the oil and gas industry. Manufacturing: those are refineries, they fall within manufacturing. To look at it another way, what is the percentage of those industries gained or lost? You can see that these statistics support the earlier comment that leisure, hospitality, oil, and gas – clearly some of the hardest hit last year.”
Moriarty also offered a update on what’s going on in the Cook Inlet: “I think some of the biggest news for 2020 is John Hendrix and his company, Hex, came in and finalized the sale of the Furie assets. We know that John, being a born-and-raised peninsula boy from Homer, is very focused on local hiring and local contractors. I know he has certainly increased the number of local residents.”
She also noted that the industry has been aggressive with regards to COVID safety, setting standards quickly to mitigate the potential spread, especially to the North Slope.
Before wrapping up, Moriarty celebrated the overwhelming success in the industry’s fight against Ballot Measure 1 in November’s general election, which would have prompted higher tax rates on portions of the oil and gas industry.
Brittany Brown, Executive Director of the Kenai Chamber of Commerce, noted that this is expected to be the final joint virtual luncheon between Kenai and Soldotna, as Kenai is set to return to in-person chamber luncheons in the future.