A letter on March 17 by Elisabeth Balster Dabney titled “Don’t trust Hilcorp” prompts me to respond. I built a successful small business starting in the late 1980s providing pumps and other related equipment to the oil industry, mining, municipal wastewater and other related industries. I’m particularly intimate with the oil industry and can testify to the trustworthiness of Hilcorp.
They run an efficient business with minimal bureaucracy and no nonsense, in my experience, and I’ve been doing this a long time. To suggest Hilcorp will run roughshod over our environment doesn’t make sense. No oil company could get away with that given the scrutiny the industry is met with and the consequences for doing so.
Have they had issues? Of course, particularly those related to aging facilities they inherited such as those in the Cook Inlet. I can name several other incidents other oil-related companies have suffered, not the least of which is the Valdez oil spill. If you want to complain about something, complain about Juneau politics.
— William Ahrens
Eagle River
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