…without the Joint Federal-State Oil and Gas Beaufort Sea Lease Sale of 1979 thirty years ago?  What would Alaska be without the 30-year-old Alaska Support Industry Alliance whose first formal action was to support that 1979 lease sale?  Hit the Alliance website here today as an expression of appreciation for its Members’ 30 years of service to the families of Alaska!  Where would we be, indeed; I don’t know exactly, but Alaska’s circumstances would be decidedly less prosperous.  

Commentary: As the Alliance celebrates 30 years of success, we are mindful that resource development challenges continue in Alaska, the Lower 48 and with our Canadian cousins.  The oil and gas industry is the bedrock, the keystone of wealth for both the United States and Canada.  Without such wealth stability, North America would be far less prosperous, one surmises; without it, North Americans would have spent more than a century transferring more of our more meager earnings, jobs and prosperity to other nations in return for their energy.  Forces are at work today to deny Canada and the Unites States — particularly Alaska and the northern territories — the opportunity to continue producing fossil energy wealth.  These forces come in pleasant disguises but all are special interests using the energy industry and cultivated environmental sentiments to leverage money or acclaim for those special interests.

 Meanwhile, what about the ‘special interests’ of ordinary citizens who just want a good place to reasonably support their families in freedom?  The Alliance has represented that family special interest in Alaska.  Its members have grown and prospered and transfered abroad to become leaders in Canada’s industry…just as many Canadian leaders have traveled through the Alliance doors while on duty in Alaska.  If North American families are to prosper into the latter half of this century, they and their Alliance-like organizations must become even better organized, more diligent and more effective in defending free enterprise and the true story of North American Energy.  

That true story can be told by every explorer, every driller, every geologist, every reservoir engineer, every control board operator, and every cook, mechanic, and truck driver…perhaps in this way: "We safely provide the wealth to support this civilization and the energy to sustain it and we do it better than anyone else in the world.  We demand no subsidy.  We only request a reasonable tax and regulatory burden and access to oil and gas properties with potential.  Why would our own countrymen not be giving us their wholehearted support at the very time we are being courted by foreign partners?"   -dh

(Video: Alaskan Ron Barks tells his ‘true story’.  NGP Photos: Jeanine St. John, Alliance President and Paul Laird, General Manager {or, "Exalted Master" to those on a first name basis with him}.  See another Alliance related story here and see our pre-2003 Alliance reports, here.)