While Fairbanks’ — And All Of Alaska’s — Economy Approaches Catastrophe, Fairbanks Senator Joe Paskvan (NGP Photo),  Resists Efforts to Change Production Tax to Fill Pipeline Lifeline.  (-dh comment)

Petroleum News 

  • Alan Baily and Kristen Nelson.  In February Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. President Tom Barrett told the Alaska House Resources Committee that the trans-Alaska oil pipeline system, known as TAPS, had come close to the brink of a major outage when forced into a winter shutdown following an oil leak in January at pump station one, at….
  • On March 31 the Anchorage Economic Development Corp. will present its annual 10-year projection of potential resource extraction projects in Alaska. And, with various projects uncertain or on hold thanks to a variety of factors including taxation, environmental permitting, high development costs and…
  • Alan Baily.  Senator Mark Begich (NGP Photo) proposes Arctic Coordinator.  (Comment.  We credit the good senator for trying to clean up after the leader of his party.  However, if the Obama Administration were doing its job, a "coordinator of regulators" would be unnecessary.  Since the Administration is not doing its job, pretext is given to establish a new bureaucracy which may, but likely will not, create more competence within the Federal regulatory structure.  One guesses that the new position — like that of the gas pipeline Federal Coordinator — will be extremely sensitive to direction from the President, whose Administration has created such energy policy chaos in the first place.  In short, if Obama wanted to stimulate more domestic production he could easily do so without manufacturing another bureaucracy over which he exercises control.  In truth, Obama is the Federal Coordinator and no shuffling of people or creation of new positions will change that raw fact.  -dh)
The Hill: Offshore oil drilling fight heats up.  The rhetoric about domestic oil drilling reached a fever pitch in Washington this week with the Obama administration touting the approval of more Gulf deepwater drilling permits and Republicans countering that the pace of permitting is still too slow. 

Calgary Herald, by David Finch.  In 1971, the federal government said we had plenty of petroleum.  By its estimates, Canada had a 392-year supply of gas and enough oil for 923 years. But the OPEC crisis of the 1970s proved otherwise.  Today’s prognosticators are saying the price of natural gas will stay low forever, that we can use it instead of coal, and that the recently discovered supplies of shale gas will keep prices depressed indefinitely.