The Alaska House of Representatives passed House Joint Resolution 34, which would support oil and gas leasing development within the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. The bill, which passed unanimously, urges the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, to take into account the long history of responsible oil and gas development on the North Slope region and the benefits would bring to local communities, tribal governments, the state, and the nation. The Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, and the North Slope Borough all are united in opposition to the Interior’s decision to reverse the 2020 NPR-A Integrated Activity Plan, which was developed in consultation with the North Slope tribes and the Alaska Native corporations.
That NPR-A Integrated Activity Plan included in it provisions that would have ensured future economic development opportunities for the North Slope region, allowed for community infrastructure needs to be considered in the NPR-A, and required that areas identified by local and Alaska Native entities be excluded from future leasing.
Rep. Josiah Patkotak (Utqiagvik) said:
“We walk a fine line and that is striking a balance between our cultural and subsistence resources that we’ve lived on for thousands of years that I currently live on, and I do the best to teach my kids to live on. The other side of that balance is the fact that we live in a cash economy. Flushing my toilet isn’t going to come free. Oil and gas development, though we’ve had our concerns with it, and have, I think through the processes, found ways to mitigate our concerns, at the end of the day, what it does is it allows us to have a microeconomy in rural Alaska, which is something we should all strive for across the state. I hear a lot of debate about ways that we can help rural Alaska. This is one of those ways.”
Rep. Patkotak
“The role that Alaska Native Corporations play and what they mean to my area and what they mean to the state as far as bolstering the economy and then the other aspect, obviously, was the local taxing authority that we have up there that allows us to pay for water and sewer infrastructure, schools, clinics, roads, everything that we debate about here on the floor as far as the capital budget, we like to take care of at home.”
The 2020 NPR-A Integrated Activity Plan and Environmental Impact Statement estimates potential annual government revenue, including local, state, and federal taxes and royalties, of between $730 million to $4.75 billion from oil and gas development in the NPR-A, which would result in 3,600 direct jobs and 2,750 indirect jobs annually over a period of 30 years.
The bill now heads to the Alaska State Senate.
Transcribed audio courtesy of KTOO 360TV.
