WASHINGTON -- As Shell prepared to announce its impending departure from the U.S. Arctic, Sen. Lisa Murkowski was closing out a weekend tour of all things Arctic with a few Senate colleagues that included a stop in Barrow, just 150 miles from Shell's soon-to-be-abandoned well in the Chukchi Sea.
Despite recent major news of setbacks for Arctic oil drilling, the trip Murkowski planned for herself and Sens. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., wasn't about oil at all.
"We had a fabulous trip," Murkowski said upon returning to Congress Monday night for an evening budget vote.
"Sen. Murkowski is on a mission to educate members of Congress on the Arctic," Murkowski's spokeswoman Karina Peterson said in an email. The trip -- known as a "codel" in Washington, D.C., short for "congressional delegation" -- was meant to demonstrate "what other Arctic nations have already accomplished and what the current situation and current conditions are in Alaska -- America's Arctic," Peterson said.
"We had an opportunity to learn about Arctic challenges. Unless you go there and look at it, you don't understand the challenges they've got," Round said in an interview. He pointed to changing storm cycles in Barrow and excitedly talked about new dinosaur research he encountered during the trip.
As is customary, international travel by members of Congress and staff is paid for by the State Department, and in this case, the Defense Department provided military aircraft "to reach destinations that would not have been otherwise possible via commercial air," Peterson said.
After the close of votes in the Senate Thursday night, Murkowski, Barrasso and Rounds left for their trip, heading first to Iceland.
They spent Friday in Reykjavik, where they were briefed on Iceland's use of geothermal power, met members of the Icelandic parliament and learned about an Icelandic-American group producing renewable methane gas for transportation fuel.
On Saturday, the group traveled to Svalbard, Norway -- Murkowski's first visit to the archipelago, situated off the mainland of Norway in the Arctic Ocean.
There the three toured Ny-Alesund, an international research station focused on Arctic and climate change research, the local university and the Global Seed Vault. They were also briefed on search and rescue activities in the area.
On Sunday, the three visited Thule Air Base in Greenland -- the U.S. Air Force's northernmost air base. They met with the commander and were briefed on logistics and port activities, according to Murkowski's office.
The same day, Murkowski, Barrasso and Rounds headed to Barrow, where they toured winter storm damage and were briefed by staff from the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium.
The codel did not meet with any oil and gas officials while in Barrow, Barrasso said. Instead, they met with local leaders and learned about the whale harvest. The senator from Wyoming eagerly showed off "the leftover innards" of several harvested whales on the beach.
Late in the day, the three headed to Fairbanks, where they toured the Permafrost Tunnel and the Cold Climate Housing Research Center, and Murkowski spoke at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, according to her office.
Despite a trip that on paper appeared heavily focused on scientific discovery, Barrasso, a member of the Senate energy and environment committees, said it was especially interesting "to see Putin's involvement versus the president's involvement up there.
"You see Vladimir Putin approaching the Arctic from a standpoint where he can exploit the energy for the benefit of his economy," Barrasso said in an interview Tuesday.
Obama, meanwhile, spent his trip to Alaska on "an environmental science experiment, and I think we're really missing an opportunity to use the energy that's up there, specifically in Alaska," Barrasso said.
He pointed to Shell's decision to pull out of Arctic drilling the day after he left Barrow and blamed the Obama administration for "moving the goal posts" and "changing the regulations."
Russian President Putin is aggressive while Obama retreats, Barrasso charged. "So I look to that and I say we need to use more energy, American energy," he said.
Barrasso also pointed to growing efforts by Russia and China to procure more icebreakers and move to more northern shipping routes. But he wouldn't specifically say whether the U.S. -- through Congress -- should build more icebreakers. Supporters of building new icebreakers have struggled to squeeze the billion-dollar bill necessary to build one out of an ever-shrinking federal budget.
Barrasso would only say he thinks Obama isn't appropriately matching Putin's "aggression in the Arctic."