Alaska editorials

Here is a sampling of editorial opinions from Alaska newspapers:

Dec. 24, 2016

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: Bans on oil and gas leasing robs Alaska of potential jobs, revenue

The outrage from Alaska’s political leaders and industry groups was swift, predictable - and completely appropriate.

Once again, President Barack Obama has acted in a manner detrimental to Alaska and to the nation’s energy needs. What he did on Tuesday was use a provision of a 1953 law to, in his view, indefinitely put most of the U.S.-controlled portion of the Arctic Ocean off limits to future oil and gas leasing. The announcement Tuesday also affected some waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

In doing so, the president cited the importance of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas to the subsistence lifestyle of Alaska Natives and also referenced what he sees as the “significant” risks of a spill and the nation’s “limited” ability to clean up a spill. He said the nation needs “to continue to move decisively away from fossil fuels.”

It has become well-established that the nation does, indeed, need to broaden its sources of energy and to continually work toward producing energy in a cleaner way. The nation and the energy industry have steadily been moving in this direction, in part because that’s what consumers and energy company stockholders want them to do.

President Obama’s decision to act unilaterally and on such a tremendous scale, taking such a large swath of potential energy out of play, is uncalled for. It also appears to be an action done out of an irrational fear that the impending presidency of Donald Trump is going to become one of widespread pillaging of public lands by energy companies, with oil rigs poking holes in wilderness areas and pipelines criss-crossing national conservation sites.

That doomsday scenario is just not likely.

What does President Obama’s decision to put an end to future Beaufort and Chukchi sea oil and gas leasing mean for Alaska?

In terms of direct revenue to the state, not much at the moment. That’s because there’s no Outer Continental Shelf drilling going on. If there were, Alaska would be receiving some income through a revenue-sharing program with the federal government, though not as much, percentage-wise, as states in the oil-producing region of the Gulf of Mexico. That’s a separate issue that Sen. Murkowski has been working on.

So what the president essentially did is rob Alaska of the potential for additional revenue, albeit revenue that would likely not be seen for many years given the lengthy amount of time it would take for an offshore lease to be brought into production. Why don’t we have offshore production now, you ask? In part because this administration, through previous actions, has never been friendly to offshore drilling in the Arctic.

The president’s decision this week also robbed Alaskans of job opportunities. The oil industry workforce has seen good employment in recent years, but that has been steadily declining along with the drop in oil prices. The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, in its October employment forecast for all industries, projects the number of jobs in the oil and gas extraction sector will fall 10 percent by 2024. Within that number, and perhaps most telling, is that drilling jobs are expected to fall 18.9 percent. The president’s decision exacerbates that.

And, although it’s an offshore production would certainly be many years distant, the additional oil flowing through the trans-Alaska oil pipeline could have a direct effect on the Fairbanks North Star Borough through property taxes. More oil in the pipeline would mean a greater assessed value of the pipeline, which in turn would mean the oil companies would be paying more in property taxes for the portion of the pipeline system located within the borough.

The law President Obama exercised is the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, approved in August 1953. The issue as it relates to the president’s decision focuses on a brief section under the heading “Reservation of lands and rights.” It says simply that “The President of the United States may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the Outer Continental Shelf.”

There’s no mention in the law about a subsequent president undoing such a predecessor’s declaration. Presumably the present Republican-controlled Congress could pass a law to undo it, but such an attempt would surely be subject to filibuster in the Senate. Republicans would need the help of Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold to end the filibuster blockade.

So there will have to be another way to overturn the president’s withdrawal of the ocean acreage from the federal leasing program. But there is apparently no precedent for how to do it. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in a recent interview with the Daily News-Miner, said, “How we can reverse this is something we are going to have to reckon with and figure out.”

Let’s hope a way to overturn the decision can be found quickly.

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Dec. 23, 2016

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: Possible Russian hacking a serious concern

The consensus of U.S. intelligence services that the Russian government engaged in acts of hacking during this year’s presidential election with the aim of supporting eventual winner and President-elect Donald Trump should be sobering to Americans of all political stripes. Leadership in Congress has been right to call for a full investigation of the matter. Although the nature of online activity that Russian agents are believed to have perpetrated doesn’t rise to the level of casting a shadow on the legitimacy of the election, questions must be answered about how a foreign power was able to play such a dramatic role in the framing of presidential politics. We must determine to what extent hackers of all foreign powers are able to compromise our online security, and we must harden cyber defenses to lessen the potential for future incidents, as well as limit their effectiveness if one does succeed.

It is a sign of the intense politicization of American government that the reaction to the Russian hacking hasn’t been more uniform among the general population. Attempted interference in a U.S. presidential election by a foreign power should be abhorrent to Americans, regardless of the level of success or intended target of the attacks. One of the founding principles of our nation is that of self-determination. To have a foreign power attempt to influence that determination is corrosive to our system of government. If left unchecked, over time, it can erode democratic institutions, and its extreme potential for economic damage has already been demonstrated in the business sector.

To be sure, no evidence has been made public that Russia or its agents interfered directly with the voting process. But there is a remarkable consensus among the U.S. intelligence agencies that the Russian government was engaging in hacking incidents during the presidential campaign. “The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations,” a joint memo from 17 U.S. intelligence services released on Oct. 7 read. That memo went on to say, “These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow - the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

This is no idle observation. Such uniformity and certainty is rare in the intelligence community. When all 17 of the U.S. intelligence services agree on a foreign power’s actions and intent, we ought to pay attention. Instead, the issue has become a political football, with Mr. Trump’s supporters minimizing or outright denying the hacking and his critics seeking to use the issue as a wedge to undermine the legitimacy of the election. Both reactions are shameful and harmful to our country’s governance. The degree of outrage you express about such issues shouldn’t be determined by their effects on your preferred political party. It has been bizarre to watch those supporting Mr. Trump resorting to extreme moral relativism and claims that the ends somehow justify the means of foreign involvement. It has been dismaying to see Democratic Party operatives such as Clinton campaign chair John Podesta attempt to spin the hacking incidents into an indictment of Mr. Trump. Though Mr. Trump and his campaign benefited from the cyberattacks, there’s no evidence they had any hand in them.

Surprisingly, it has been Congress that has taken the sanest tack on the hacking incidents so far. Senate committees will investigate the nature and extent of the attacks, and both of Alaska’s senators have stated their support for such action. Determining the nature and extent of the attacks will be crucial to determining what their effects were, what an appropriate response should be and how best to prevent such actions in the future. Cyberwarfare has become an area of crucial vulnerability for all nations, including America. Putting resources into better online defenses - and pushing back against such attacks by foreign powers - will be ever more crucial as technology advances and our reliance on it becomes even greater.