Arctic

Talk of Obama visit to Alaska draws attention to Arctic issues

Is President Barack Obama coming to Alaska this summer?

The White House hasn't yet said, but word of a possible presidential visit -- first made public in February by Sen. Lisa Murkowski -- got a boost Thursday when a White House team landed in Dillingham.

Dillingham Mayor Alice Ruby told local public radio station KDLG that "We were contacted by some Washington staffers to tell us that it's possible the President would make a trip to Alaska sometime in the late summer or fall, and that it's also possible that he might visit some rural communities, and Dillingham had made the list of those communities."

She also told the station she thinks other Alaska communities will receive similar visits.

Among those could be communities in the Arctic, near where Royal Dutch Shell intends to conduct exploratory offshore oil drilling -- efforts that have been met with vocal opposition across the nation and around the world. Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, who introduced legislation Thursday to block Shell's drilling, told the Houston Chronicle's energy blog Fuel Fix that he hopes an Obama visit to Arctic Alaska would prompt the Interior Department to withhold the final pending permits Shell needs to drill this season.

"The president himself has talked about going to the Arctic later this summer," Merkley told Fuel Fix. "So I hope the president will be able to use this as a moment to ponder the type of destruction that I'm speaking of and come to support that the Arctic should absolutely be off limits."

Obama visited Alaska in 2009 during a refueling stop but remained on what was then Elmendorf Air Force Base.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry is slated to meet with top officials from Arctic nations -- including his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov -- at a "ministerial event" in Alaska later this summer, according to Adm. Robert Papp Jr., the State Department's special representative for the U.S. Arctic.

ADVERTISEMENT