Hearst Newspapers by Jennifer Dlouhy.  

The United States should move swiftly to harness the tremendous oil and gas reserves locked under its Arctic waters while the industry improves the equipment used to drill wells and sop up spills, according to a government advisory committee report released Friday.

The analysis, conducted by the National Petroleum Council at the request of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, makes the case for the United States to aggressively develop Arctic oil and gas that can help supply the country with energy long after production tails off from onshore fields.   More….


Juneau  Empire Editorial.  

Lately, the Alaska Legislature has been talking a lot about the gas pipeline. Under Gov. Sean Parnell, Alaska signed a deal with Big Oil that would build one from the North Slope down to the Kenai Peninsula. By all accounts, that pipeline’s looking like the best way to keep Alaska from going broke in the middle term. 

Of course, we’ve thought the same thing before. We thought it about the El Paso proposal, the Foothills Gas Pipeline, the Yukon Pacific Corp. pipeline, the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act and the Denali Gas pipeline. We’ve thought it about bullet lines and small-diameter lines.

The AK LNG — Alaska Liquified Natural Gas — pipeline might yet turn out to be another broken dream. If that happens, the state will be in true financial trouble.

With so much at stake, doesn’t it make sense to have a spare tire?