Anchorage Daily News

BP plans to slash Alaska investment. A story in The Times of London reports that BP plans to cut spending on future oil development in Alaska. The action is in response to the increased tax burden Alaska lawmakers imposed on the oil industry during a special session this year, according to the story.

“Alaska’s move is a further blow to international oil companies, which have seen their assets come under threat in Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Russia and Venezuela,” according to the story. “The fiscal broadside in the heartland of the US oil industry represents a home-grown political backlash against big oil after several years of mounting concern about bribery, corruption and operational negligence.”

On the same subject, a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story today isn’t as specific on cuts as The Times report but says that BP is reviewing its 2008 spending plan for Alaska. The story quotes a BP spokesman saying the tax changes will have a significant impact on the company’s work plan.

Conoco Phillips in mid-December said it was altering its spending plan in the wake of the new tax approach. Click here to read the ADN story on that decision.

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The only good wolf … Recent wolf attacks on dogs in the Anchorage area are stirring people to action, according to a KTVA Channel 11 story, with some showing a boosted interest in firearms and pepper spray and taking more care where they walk their dogs.

The actions come in response to attacks that have killed two dogs in recent weeks. (Read the ADN story on the attacks here.) “They're getting pretty close, and if they come after my dog or myself I'm going to shoot them,” the KTVA story quotes one Eagle River resident as saying.

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On being uncontinental. A short essay in the Kodiak Daily Mirror by Mirror writer Drew Herman will likely resonate with any Alaskan who bought a Christmas gift online this season and then encountered the demand for an extra $20 to ship it to Alaska because we’re not part of the continental United States. Alaskans are likely destined to lose arguments raised on the issue, but the essay notes we don’t have to surrender easily:

“Maybe it’s a little disingenuous to make this argument from Kodiak, which has never been either contiguous or continental, but there’s a principle involved — the long established right of Alaska to federal subsidization of a lifestyle utterly unsuited to our location. Maybe we’re not contiguous, and they don’t know we’re continental, but we can at least be contentious.”

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Spotlight on spending. A Washington Times editorial today reports on what a little bit of research on the White House Office of Management and Budget new web site on government spending showed regarding spending in Alaska:

“The Alaskan state data, for instance, flesh out how fully the state's residents benefit from outsized federal spending with more than twice the average share of federal spending by population. The federal government reported 17,409 transactions there last year worth $2.1 billion, or half a percent of the national total. For a state with only about one-fifth of a percent of the population, that is quite a haul (and does not even count the tax benefits of Alaska residency).”

The editorial goes on to note the “rather cozy atmosphere” that a search of Alaska’s top contractors showed: “The state's top 10 contractors won 38 percent of the $2.1 billion total, compared to 31 percent of top contractors nationally, for instance. Interestingly, none of the nation's top 10 major contractors is among Alaska's top 10.”

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Bounty of waste. A KTUU Channel 2 story looks at the mountain of trash — wrapping paper, packaging materials and the like — generated by Christmas. Much of the waste can be recycled, according to the story.

But while the trash mounts at Christmas, it doesn’t stack up to summer’s haul, according to the people who deal with garbage year-round. Yard work and home improvement tasks make summer the season of the most trash.

Also on the trash front, a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner editorial today headlined “Merry Trashmas” takes note of the holiday mess — “a rainbow of ripped-up wrapping paper” — someone spread along Chena Hot Springs Road. “Let’s keep the holiday waste where it belongs,” the editorial pleads, “in trash bags and at the landfill.”

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“Christmas kindness in Alaska.” A short essay posted on The Hartford Courant Web site today tells a tale of a Christmas 33 years ago in which the kindness of a bunch of Fairbanksans made for a memorable Christmas for one man. Roger M. Thorson, then a lonely University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate student and now a University of Connecticut professor, writes that “the simple act of offering kindness to a stranger can ripple through a lifetime of holidays.”

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Against the tide. A Los Angeles Times story today tells of the struggles in Newtok against the tidal erosion caused by warming temperatures that is imperiling “not just the Yupik Eskimo inhabitants but their ancient way of life.” The chopping waters have advanced 80 feet this year alone on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta village.

The fears of Newtok — and other villages — are getting more press. But now aid advocates say the situation is dire, according to the story. “Tidal erosion has made the village so vulnerable that the next big storm could destroy what remains, said Deborah L. Williams, who heads Alaska Conservation Solutions. ‘The situation is very urgent,’ said Williams, who visited Newtok this year. She said the permafrost ‘was melting like chocolate ice cream in the sun.’”

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Coming up for air. First off, here’s the background, as reported in a Peninsula Daily News story from Port Angeles, Wash.: A Port Townsend woman, Cindy Buxton, says she developed severe breathing and headache problems after smelling the odor from the Port Townsend Paper Corp. mill. She says she was ordered by doctors never to return to Port Townsend. Her case is part of an appeal contesting the mill’s air quality permit.

And now where, according to the story, has she moved in the meantime to get the good air she needs? Haines, Alaska.

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“Most Alaskan Christmas gift ever.” Tundra Medicine Dreams blog from Bethel takes note of how some Alaskans are skilled at using the materials at hand to fix about anything. And then she gets specific by describing how a Bethel home close to ruin was made serviceable again with a 6-inch coating of orange insulation sprayed all over the outside. “It wasn’t pretty, but apparently it worked fine; a family lived there for years,” she writes.

She goes on to describe a Christmas gift that turned up this year, which proved a mystery for a time. Then somebody figured out it was a candle holder made of ice. “So Alaska,” she writes.

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More Alaska headlines:

> Future ferry schedule concerns Port Lions (Kodiak Daily Mirror)

> Wildlife group to question runway project (Juneau Empire)

> Southeast longliners willing to work with halibut harvest restrictions (APRN)

> National Catholic Lay Board issues report on sexual abuse (APRN)

> Ice jams still a possibility (Peninsula Clarion)

> Local retailers report strong holiday sales (Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman)

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