alaska

The troubles that roiled Shell’s rig, the Kulluk, off the coast of Alaska this past winter will reverberate through the summer; the oil company announced it would not seek to drill in U.S. Arctic waters in 2013.[read more]

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While we’re in Alaska, we keep hearing the same joke that if Alaska were split in two, Texas would be the third largest state. It turns out that when it comes to oil production, there’s a new state that’s fallen to third place – Alaska.In March, North Dakota passed Alaska to be the second-largest oil producer. From the AP:North Dakota...[read more]

The U.S. government is considering plans to increase oil and gas production off Alaska, and major companies are eying untapped resources in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. But these potential oil and gas fields are in pristine areas, called “the garden” by native Inupiat tribes, that have been hunted and fished for thousands of years. energyNOW! correspondent Dan Goldstein travels to Alaska’s North Slope to find out if offshore drilling can co-exist with an ancient way of life.[read more]

In February, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission made its eleventh report to the U.S. Congress on the status of efforts to build a natural gas pipeline in Alaska. The twice-annual reports are required by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Three efforts to bring gas from the North Slope of Alaska to market seem to be underway:...[read more]

Yesterday's announcement by President Obama that his administration would allow new offshore drilling on selected portions of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) that had formerly been off-limits yielded a variety of reactions. Energy industry leaders were cautiously optimistic, environmentalists were disappointed or "outraged", and the...[read more]

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has decided to hold the fate of her state, nation, and world hostage to drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as explained by guest blogger Daniel J. Weiss, CAPAF’s Director of Climate Strategy. Murkowski gave a long impassioned speech when she introduced her “Dirty Air Act” – a Congressional Review...[read more]

For 30 odd years there has been talk of building a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope of Alaska into Canada and down to the lower 48 states.  For a time it seemed almost a necessity given the prospects of diminishing gas supplies in the lower 48 and the cost of competing on the world market for LNG imports.  Then, of...[read more]

What does “price gouging” mean?  Commonly it is taken to refer to merchants raising prices substantially on necessities during emergencies.  Each of the three elements – substantial price increase, necessary items, emergency periods – is part of a proto-typical case of price gouging. However, the term is frequently also used...[read more]

Last year, as crude oil and gasoline prices went on their wild ride, gasoline prices in Alaska took a somewhat different path than prices in the lower 48 states.  For years, average prices in Alaska were about the same as the U.S. average price.  Higher costs of delivery in Alaska were mostly offset by the nation’s lowest...[read more]

The senator from one of the biggest oil states in the nation has become a leading advocate for nuclear energy Alaskan Sen. Lisa Murkowski is taking a leadership role advocating in Congress for nuclear energy to be supported in energy legislation now working its way through the Energy & Natural Resources Committee. On June 2...[read more]

Today's posting serves in lieu of a letter to the editors of the New York Times, in response to the misleading comparisons drawn in today's editorial concerning the "Lessons of the Exxon Valdez." The editorial characterizes oil development as "an inherently risky, dirty business — especially so in the forbidding waters of the Arctic."...[read more]