Oil: The Dark Lifeblood of Our State
By Colin Arthur Warren
Like many Alaskans, I moved here for nature. Few places in the world offer the sweeping vistas, abundant wildlife, multitudes of massive meandering rivers, or the ability to find oneself alone in a valley undisturbed by the mechanistic hum of humanity. And while all those benefits remain potent here, they exist at odds with the fact that Alaska is a petrostate. We as a whole– our roads, our policies, our universities –are driven and funded by revenue from taxes on oil production. We live beside pristine nature and are aware that, by most measures, our state is feeling the effects of global warming four times faster than elsewhere in the world, all while funding this existence by pumping gas and oil. We can do our part on a micro-level; that is, we can live simply, limit our driving, try to not eat too much commercial meat, and support green advocacy groups. But at a macro-level, the longer I live here, the more it seems that we’re helplessly pinned to oil, even though there’s an unending chorus of state, domestic, and international cries to address climate change. Even with a Democrat in the White House.
The first step in addressing these problems is to be informed, so I wanted to recap exactly what happened this last year in the petrostate we call home. Between the approval of the Willow Project last spring, followed by the reneging of permits and the implementation of protection for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) last fall, there’s a lot to catch up on.
If presidents were kicked out of office for going back on their campaign promises, we’d have a lot thrown to the curb throughout history. Biden is no exception: “There will be no more drilling in federal lands, period. Period, period.” Well his redundancy seemed to be a sign that he was full of it. The Willow Project, approved last March– interestingly one of the only drilling permits that he wasn’t forced to sign off on via a judge or a congressional mandate –is definitely on federal lands. The Willow Project rests in the National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A), which was set aside by President Harding back in 1923 as emergency oil supply for the US Navy. They didn’t even really know there was oil there at the time; their hunch proved overwhelmingly correct. ConocoPhillips, the company behind the project, says that they believe it will produce nearly 600 million barrels of oil over the project’s lifespan of thirty years.
That’s about 180,000 barrels per day. The New York Times likes to equate the pollution that will be produced by burning that much oil to adding two-million cars to the roads each year. Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, however, prefers to point to the $10 billion the state coffers will see from tax revenue from that production and the 2,000 jobs that the project will create during construction, followed by the 300 operational jobs during the lifetime of the project. When oil is our state’s only revenue source, it’s unsurprising to see our elected officials defending it mercilessly.
Environmental activists– from TikTok stars to powerful NGOs –all got pretty pissed at Biden last March when he approved Willow, lashing out at his administration in all the ways they know how. But even though it appeared that he approved the project by his own free will, in the months since, statements have come out from his administration explaining otherwise. Conoco has had leases to drill in the area for decades, and if Biden broke those leases his attorney’s advised him that he could spend upwards of $5 billion between lawyer fees and making things right with Conoco. Plus, the war in Ukraine weighed heavily on energy markets and when prices at the pumps rise, politicians are pressured to react. Typically, when prices are high at gas stations, politicians get low poll ratings. Sometimes we can see in real time that politician’s motives are purely driven by the next election cycle. And speaking of polls, it was shocking for most politicos to see one come out of Emerson College last November that had under-thirty year olds favoring Trump (47%) against Biden (45%) in a predictive run of the 2024 presidential election. This is alarming to Democrats because young voters carried Biden to victory in 2020 with 59% of under-thirty year olds voting for him over the 33% that voted for Trump according to Pew Research Center. Now, anyone that lived through the 2016 presidential election knows well to take polls with not just a grain, but perhaps, a rock of salt. Yet Biden needs to secure support, as currently it seems all but certain that the eighty year-old is going to be the Democratic nominee in the next election. Without the green wing of the party firmly behind him, he has little chance of regaining the youth vote.
And that’s what many environmental groups thought was going on when the Biden administration canceled all drilling leases in ANWR in early September. Make no mistake, the move was a victory for climate activists and tribes, especially the Gwich’in tribe, whose villages border ANWR and rely on subsistence hunting directly affected by activity there. Gwich’in refer to the flat coastal plains in ANWR where drilling leases were held in Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, or “the sacred place where life begins.” And for good reason.
Migratory birds from six continents go back there each year, and the porcupine caribou herd has been descending on the area since time immemorial to calve. The Gwich’in have maintained a balance based on profound respect for the relationship with the herd as their primary source of food. Climatologists also hope that if the herd remains healthy, that their presence can aid in the slowing of the permafrost thawing, which could unleash even more carbon than will be released by the Willow Project. The thinking goes, according to a report from the Yale School of the Environment, that without caribou eating the brush in ANWR, it will grow much taller and snow will melt much quicker in the spring because of it, hastening that thawing permafrost layer.
Others were not as impressed with the news.
“[Protections of ANWR and protections that were simultaneously placed on parts of NPR-A by the Biden Administration] are nothing more than window dressing,” said Ben Jealous, President of the Sierra Club. “If President Biden were sitting here I’d tell him don’t spit on us when it’s raining.”
Basically, he is referring to both the fact that few big companies wanted to drill in ANWR, and all these protections are presidential only– not congressionally set –meaning they could easily be taken away by another administration. When Trump opened up permits to drill in ANWR, none of the big oil companies even bothered to bid on them. That could be because of a lack of production, and also because of the public relations nightmares that would ensue for those companies. People are aware of ANWR as a special place, but when the public at large hears that we’re planning to drill in a place called National Petroleum Reserve, where Willow is located, they’re a lot less likely to take up arms.
Also, it should be noted, the other tribe in the area, the Iñupiats, are largely in favor of drilling in ANWR and the Willow Project; at least their native corporation and many of its members are in favor of it. They had opposition within their ranks from the town nearest to Willow, Nuiqsut, which has positioned themselves with an environmental Native group called the Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic (SILA) against the project. Until October elections in Nuiqsut led to a resolution in early January that formerly withdrew that opposition from the city and tribal councils, respectively.
The rescinding of leases in ANWR upset Senator Murkowski, who called the move “reckless and illegal.” Drilling there has been a familial pursuit for the Murkowskis; her father had managed to get a drilling measure passed through Congress before President Clinton vetoed it. And she definitely celebrated loudly when she passed it through both houses and got President Trump to sign it back in 2017 as part of a tax-cut-for-the-rich bill.
All of our elected officials that operate at the federal level– Peltola, Sullivan, and Murkowski– are in favor of the Willow Project and drilling in ANWR. Same goes for Governor Mike Dunleavy. The gist of their argument is that there’s currently an all-time high demand for oil around the globe, and if we drill in Alaska we’ll do it in an environmentally safer way while preventing oil revenue from going to autocratic regimes, as well as the fact Alaska Natives could use the money to advance their infrastructure, education, and bank accounts.
Colin’s View:
Personally, I can appreciate those points our representatives have made. And there is part of me that is swayed towards being in favor of drilling Willow because of their arguments and because of the numbers behind the carbon emissions from the project versus other gas and oil projects. As I said, The New York Times compares the Willow Project to putting two million more cars on the road each year, which is about nine million metric tons of CO2 per year. However, as their opinion writer David Wallace-Wells explained, “And yet nine million metric tons is only about two-tenths of one percent of current American emissions.” Which makes it seem like the answer to solving the climate crisis doesn’t reside in restricting the Willow Project.
And while everyone, Biden included, is touting the Inflation Reduction Act (I.R.A.) passed last year as, in the president’s own words, being “[t]he biggest step forward on climate ever, ever” he doesn’t sell me on the Act. Maybe I’m just wary of a politician being redundant in speeches again.
I’m also alarmed by what climate writer Bill McKibben noted in The New Yorker about the Biden Administration's approval of Calcasieu Pass 2 (C.P.2), a liquid-natural-gas export terminal in Louisiana. He wrote, “the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with it would be twenty times larger than those from the oil drilling at Willow.”
Not to mention that a report out of Princeton that analyzed the I.R.A. says that it might not reduce domestic oil production by even a single barrel over the next decade. All of this adds up to a feeling of impossibility in the battle to keep carbon emissions down. Perhaps it’s just that as a resident of Alaska I’ve grown complacent to drilling. We as humans grow complacent, habituated, to our surroundings. I have not stopped filling up my gas tank and I know plenty of fine people that work on the North Slope. I’m thankful that our university gets tax money to operate from taxes on oil revenue and I definitely spend the PFD every year.
If you want to advocate against drilling in the Arctic, what do you even do? Currently the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), along with Earth Justice and the Center for Biological Diversity is suing the federal government for the approval of the Willow Project. (A judge in the 9th Circuit Court denied the plaintiffs a request for an emergency injunction against the Willow project in December; they are appealing the decision and the case will be heard in May, 2024.) Donations are very welcome on NRDC’s webpage, but it’s not like college kids have copious amounts of extra dough laying around.
It’s always a good idea to write or call your congresspeople, however, I think that contacting Murkowski or Sullivan (Conoco has been his largest donor since being elected in 2015) would be a waste of time if you’re going to ask them to stop drilling. Same with Peltola to some extent, but she might be more open-minded due to the fact she’s new to Congress and her career is just taking off.
My suggestion: contact your state-level representatives– in Fairbanks that includes representatives Carrick, Dibert, Stapp, and Tomaszewski –tell them we need tax revenue to grow and evolve as a state. Income tax is the most likely to be fair to all citizens because, unlike property or sales tax, it’s not regressive, meaning that it doesn’t disproportionately take more money away from poor people. And think of all those seasonal workers that come here and use all of our roads and services and never give us a dime! Last summer, Governor Dunleavy even proposed a new tax, albeit a sales tax, even though during his first term he promised to not do so without a state-wide vote. So please, for the love of democracy and equality, take action in the formation of taxes instead of letting them happen to you.
As awful as taxes may sound, they will get us off the teat of big oil. Either way, whatever taxes we choose - income, sales, property - we need them in order to end the Alaskan petrostate. And it’s going to happen soon anyways. Our state government has taken more and more out of the PFD reserves to fund their operations, and they will bleed it dry eventually. Just last summer the CEO of the PFD, Deven Mitchell, presented an estimation that all spendable money in the PFD fund will be exhausted in three to four years. Once we stop relying on oil money for everything, we have a much better chance at deciding honestly what’s best for our natural environment that we all adore so very much. And taxes will also give our elected officials something to defend and fight for besides wealthy corporations.
Room for Disagreement:
Throughout most of humanity, the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere was between 280 and 350 parts per million (PPM). In June of last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) measured a new record high of 424 PPM as measured at the Maura Loa observatory. That jumped 3 PPM from the year before, an astounding leap. It’s generally accepted that a maximum of 430 PPM allows us to attain the goal set at the Paris Climate Agreement (a climate change accord including nearly 200 countries that make up 90% of global emissions) of limiting global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels. If we keep seeing PPM jumps like we did last year, we will crest this limit in just a few years. With that in mind, it makes it more difficult to think that any new oil project is acceptable.
Many environmentalists and scientists have likened quitting the use of oil as our main source of energy to an addiction to alcohol. Eventually, the abuser usually needs to quit using the substance entirely. And while comparing CO2 emission numbers of different projects above, as the author did, can make the footprint of Willow seem like a drop in the bucket, we as a collective humanity need to just stop new oil projects in order to halt the precipitous dangers that lie ahead for us in the war on climate change. This is arguably the first tragedy of the commons that we have had to address internationally, which makes it exceedingly difficult to negotiate, and so richer and more powerful countries, like the U.S., who are usually also the largest emitters, need to take the lead in restricting development. Therefore, accepting the Willow Project is a direct affront to the Paris Agreement of which we are a part.
Dear Reader:
Do you agree or disagree with parts of this article? How should we proceed as a petrostate? We would love to hear from you. Please write a letter to the editor at editor@uafsunstar.com
Also, did you notice the unique form of this article in which the facts were separated from opinion? This is a newish type of article form known as Semaform. It aims to disentangle facts from analysis so that readers can tell the difference between the two. It’s new to us and we are experimenting with it. Please let us know what you think.