Today in Washington, House Natural Doc Hastings, Resources, US House, DOI, duplicating state regulations, hydraulic fracturing, Photo by Dave HarbourResources Chairman Doc Hastings (NGP Photo) called the “DOI Hydraulic Fracturing Rule: A Recipe for Government Waste, Duplication and Delay.”  See full text here.

APRN, by  Alexandra Gutierrez.  If this legislative session was all about oil, the next one could be more focused on natural gas. The end goal is a pipeline capable of moving the massive supply of gas on North Slope to market. APRN’s Alexandra Gutierrez reports that the state is looking at the issue of getting a project online from multiple angles.

For Our Early Morning Readers!  Today the Division of Oil and Gas will hold its Bill Barron, Alaska Division of Oil and Gas, Lease Sale, Cook Inlet, Geothermal, Photo by Dave Harbourannual areawide oil and gas lease sales for the Alaska Peninsula and Cook Inlet as well as a geothermal lease sale for Augustine Island. Division Director Bill Barron (NGP Photo) will be available directly after the lease sales for interviews.

 
Bid opening for the three lease sales begins at 9 a.m. at the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center, located at 600 West 7th Avenue in Anchorage. The lease sales will be conducted in this order: Alaska Peninsula, Augustine Island, and then Cook Inlet.
 
For background information on the state’s oil and gas lease sale program, go to http://dog.dnr.alaska.gov/Leasing/LeaseSales.htm. For information regarding geothermal lease sales, go to http://dog.dnr.alaska.gov/Leasing/GeothermalLeasing.htm.
Also, yesterday in Washington: House Subcommittee Examines Federal Impediments to Job Creation, Economic Growth, & Recreation on Public Lands 
 
National Ocean Policy
“As many of you are aware, the Obama Administration released an executive order in 2010 that created a National Ocean Policy. The Administration decided to sidestep the legislative process despite the fact that four Congresses had considered legislation to create a very similar ocean policy and created the National Ocean Policy by executive order and without statutory authority. Not only does this Policy add new policy goals and requirements for federal agencies to meet when permitting activities, it creates a new level of bureaucracy that will certainly add more hoops for all Americans to jump through.”
Endangered Species Act
“One of the other laws that is requiring a great deal of focus this Congress is the Endangered Species Act, which was last authorized by Congress nearly 25 years ago. This law has done more to keep environmental lawyers in business than it has to recover species or to balance the needs of average Americans.
Aside from the burdens created by the ESA, to most objective observers, the law is failing to achieve even its primary purpose of species recovery. Federal agencies charged with its implementation every year spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars under the rubric of ‘endangered species recovery.’ Yet, the law, over the past 40 years has only achieved, at best, a one or two percent recovery rate.”