Voices

Obama sells out Alaska's economic future to mollify his green base

Alaska finds itself in the unenviable position of being a political pawn -- environmental sop, actually -- in a Barack Obama hustle that could devastate the state and deprive the nation of an inestimable energy bounty.

Because of Obama's glaring disconnect with Alaska, it is no matter to him the state is poised at the edge of a steep fiscal cliff, no matter oil production is stagnant or that prices have plummeted. It is no matter Alaska depends on oil for 90 percent of its revenues, that half the state's economy and a third of its jobs depend on oil, no matter it is facing a $3.5 billion deficit.

What matters to this guy is Democratic political fortunes in 2016, even if that means throwing Alaska under the bus.

In a plan that even the Washington Post calls "politically fraught," our ersatz leader wants to fling open the door to oil and gas drilling along parts of the southeastern U.S. coastline from Virginia to Georgia.

It is estimated there are more than 3 billion barrels of recoverable oil on the Atlantic's outer continental shelf and 31 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- a bonanza for the oil industry.

That presents thorny problems of a decidedly tit-for-tat nature. While the southeastern coastal states and the industry embraced the Atlantic drilling part of the plan -- which sets boundaries for oil development in federal waters through 2022 -- it infuriated environmentalists and the political left, including senators from northeastern states, who immediately rocketed to DEFCON 1.

"If drilling is allowed off the East Coast of the United States, it puts our beaches, our fishermen and our environment on the cross hairs for an oil spill that could devastate our shores," says Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who usually reserves his shrill demagoguery for butting into Alaska issues.

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National Resources Defense Council executive director Peter Lehner says of Obama's plan, "This takes us in exactly the wrong direction."

None of it pleases Obama's cronies. There's still that pesky Keystone XL pipeline and allowing Shell Oil to muck about in Arctic waters. What to do? "Hey," Obama says, "Let's hose Alaska; let's make it a park!"

To make things right with his pals, Obama in quick order banned oil and gas exploration in and around Bristol Bay. A month later, he poured gasoline on the long-running fight over locking up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In a video filmed aboard Air Force One, which burns its 53,611-gallon fuel capacity at a gallon a second, he harangued Congress to declare 12.2 million acres of the 19 million-acre refuge "wilderness," including 1.5 million acres of its barren coastal plain -- set aside by Congress in 1980 for oil and gas exploration.

To appease greenies and the left for his opening the southeastern U.S. coast to drilling, Obama blocked development on 9.8 million acres in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. It should be noted some of the Arctic areas the plan would close permanently already were closed, or deferred, in previous plans -- and it does not seem to affect Royal Dutch Shell's program to drill in the Chukchi Sea.

The closures rightly infuriated Alaska's Native and legislative leaders and its congressional delegation. The plan prompted Sen. Lisa Murkowski to declare the administration's "colonial" actions "shortsighted, infuriating and ongoing," and she said Obama had "effectively declared war on Alaska."

She is right. The administration is choking off energy potential in Alaska. In 2010, it locked up nearly half the 23.5 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and federal agencies have stalled permits in the rest. (The Wall Street Journal makes a good case that the strategy is to starve the trans-Alaska pipeline, shut it down, have it dismantled and end forever energy production in the Arctic.)

By closing Arctic waters and trying to lock up ANWR to offset opening parts of the Southeast Seaboard to oil platforms, Obama -- a guy for whom everything is political -- would be able to set things right for 2016.

The icing on the cake? He blindsided the Republican Congress and smacked Murkowski around for cobbling up bipartisan support for Keystone and more Arctic drilling -- and he got to repay Alaska for refusing to re-elect Mark Begich and helping sink Democrats in the Senate.

Obama will not lose a moment's sleep over any of it, or what it will cost Alaskans and the nation.

To him, it is all just part of the hustle.

Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.

Paul Jenkins

Paul Jenkins is a former Associated Press reporter, managing editor of the Anchorage Times, an editor of the Voice of the Times and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

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