Interior Alaska News

State of Alaska Office of the Governor issued the following announcement on March 4.

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy issued statements on energy tonight in his reaction to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

“Mr. President, we need to view Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine as the imperialist aggression that it is and to recognize it as an international energy emergency.

In 2021, the U.S. began importing record levels of oil from Russia. With this war, Canada has recently barred Russian-imported oil. The best thing this country can do right now is start producing more energy. We’ve got to open up the spigot on oil, gas, nuclear, and renewables–hydro, solar, wind, and geothermal projects.

We need the federal government to sanction the Russians not America on energy production. Mr. President, we need to call upon the federal agencies: the EPA, Fish and Wildlife, Army Corps of Engineers, all those who have jurisdiction over permitting and licensing processes to view this as an emergency and to reverse course on procedural fault-finding decisions in order to streamline key projects as quickly as possible.

Let’s get the Keystone Pipeline going and its projected 830,000 barrels of oil per day.

It is time to unleash America’s might in Alaska’s tremendous resources to counter this move by Putin and other nations, hostile to this country and our allies. This is how we will achieve energy security quicker than any other way.

Let’s get the Alaska Gasline built. We provided nearly 50 years of uninterrupted LNG deliveries from Alaska to Japan, and we can do so again with a pipeline from the North Slope that is already permitted and has federal loan guarantees.

Alaska has billions of barrels of oil and trillions of feet of natural gas, and we produce it cleaner than virtually any other place on the planet. It’s time to restore the suspended oil leases on ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). It’s time to support, not hinder in federal court, the Willow project so that in a few years, some 160,000 barrels of oil a day can increase the throughput in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, adding to our national energy sources.

The critical minerals of the Ambler Road project, if allowed to be developed, would provide a supply of strategic minerals needed for renewables, electronics, and military defense. It’s time to undo a procedural attack on that project as recently as last week.

Before this war, our country was fast-tracking renewable projects and was canceling oil and gas projects. We should fast-track both, traditional energy sources and renewables. We should not exclude any project that would help make us energy independent.

If we act now and return to sizable projects for development, our friends in Asia and Europe should be able to sleep better knowing they can depend on us rather than be at the mercy of dictators.

Mr. President, Alaska stands ready to meet the needs of our country and our friends around the world by contributing to our national security through energy independence.”

Mike Dunleavy is the 12th Governor of Alaska.

Also view video statements from Governor Dunleavy on energy in response to President Biden’s State of the Union address at this link.

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Original source can be found here.