Calgary Herald by
Dan Healing. Athabasca Oil Corp. said Monday it plans to invest $798 million overall in capital spending in 2013, with most of that going to its thermal oilsands projects.
“With the Duvernay results coming in, with the industry interest in the Duvernay increasing a lot lately, it’s a place with our 350,000 net acres (140,000 hectares), we will have to take partners in the future, just too much cost,” said chief executive Sveinung Svarte…."
Sell Alaska?
Washington Post by Steve Mufson. … Put the entire state — from Juneau to Deadhorse, from the Bering Strait to the Beaufort Sea — on the auction block. Absurd? No more absurd than the spectacle taking place right now as we skid closer to the “fiscal cliff.” Selling real estate at top dollar is all about timing, and now’s a great time to unload the 49th state. The federal government,which owns 69 percent of Alaska, could cash in on the vast, resource-rich state at a time when oil prices are high and wild salmon is flying off the shelves at Whole….
Commentary on "Selling Alaska"
by
Dave Harbour
We are grateful to NGP Reader Kaye Laughlin (NGP Photo) for bringing this Washington Post story to our attention. And we are grateful to author Steve Mufson for educating readers about the wealth of Alaska. Indeed, reasonably and safely developed, the 49th state could save the economy of a well-managed country just as selling it might produce untold hundreds-of-billions in cash.
Insightful readers will understand, as well, that safely developing Alaska’s resources under Alaska’s tough laws would displace resources being developed less safely elsewhere. So, selling the state could only be an act of environmental enlightenment if the purchaser were as enlightened.
Properly developing Alaska’s vast resources now could materially boost total employment in the country; support a strong national defense; strengthen America’s inflating currency; and lower costs on almost all consumable items. It could help take the edge off of any current or future "fiscal cliffs".
However, development of or a sale of Alaska (i.e. 20% of the United States with 3/4 of her coastline and most of her natural resources, in the U.S.’s only Arctic state), would not provide these benefits if the owner-country is poorly managed, as now. History is our guide and we know that any improvement in revenue, under the present federal Administration, would flow into new, wasteful spending programs. New revenue could not logically have desirable effects, like paying down national debt, when the same profligate spenders remain in charge of the economy–indeed, weakening it weekly with hundreds of new regulatory burdens.
When managers are fixed on spending more and developing less, as is our present circumstance, no amount or source of new money can produce economic equilibrium.
A prudent manager would 1) safely monetize Alaska’s/America’s resources while 2) controlling spending. This imprudent Administration has shown no propensity to do either.
We love Mr. Mufson’s creative idea for the discussions it is undoubtedly prompting, and credit him, in part, with an effective effort to ‘stir the pot’ as the 2012 fiscal cliff decision approaches.
Nevertheless, we must say that a large negative effect of a sale would fall on the people and resources of Alaska. Any country that would buy the state is unlikely to be as protective of our natural resources as is Alaska’s government. Neither could Alaskan citizens be confident that their freedoms would survive the sale and transfer of ownership.
So, to Mr. Mufson and our dear readers, we laud such attempts at creativity — whether they be born of reality, jest or irony — and encourage more of it.
At the same time, we recognize that even the most elegant political (i.e. or journalistic) attempts to manipulate the free market are unlikely to produce many fiscally feasible results — as the approaching, politically created fiscal cliff demonstrates. -dh
Anchorage Chamber of Commerce board of directors has selected Andrew Halcro (NGP Photo) to serve as its new president. 
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