Sen. Murkowski Presses Interior Nominee on Department’s Rejection of Arctic Leasing
Administration’s Decisions Destroying the Hopes of Alaskans
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, today convened an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing to consider six nominees for the Department of Energy and Department of the Interior. Murkowski used her opening statement to lay out a litany of anti-Alaska actions by Interior, expressing frustration with those decisions and observing that the department is “destroying the hopes” of countless Alaskans.
“The Interior Department’s record has been very frustrating – particularly if you are an Alaskan. We’re seeing decisions out of Interior that are really destroying our hope to be independent as a state,” Murkowski said in her opening statement at Tuesday’s energy committee’s hearing.
Murkowski pointed to Interior’s denial last week of requests to extend leases in the Chukchi Sea and to Interior’s decision to cancel offshore lease sales in the Arctic.
“This past Friday, Interior launched yet another assault on Alaska’s ability to produce its resources – denying lease extensions for Shell and Statoil, while canceling offshore lease sales that were planned for the Arctic in 2016 and 2017,” she said. “These decisions again reject the needs and desires of the overwhelming majority of Alaskans. Interior has again failed to listen to us, and again chosen to act against us.”
Murkowski criticized Interior for blocking development in half of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), for stalling projects in NPR-A, for effectively locking down nearly all of the non-wilderness portion of ANWR, and for its heartless decision to reject a life-saving road for the isolated community of King Cove. She also criticized Interior for failing to provide regulatory certainty or permitting predictability for offshore Arctic development – one of the key factors that forced Shell to abandon seven years of work and $7 billion in private investment.
“If you’re an Alaskan, you have to wonder, what’s going on within Interior? What does Interior have against us? How can Interior set up a regulatory regime that prevents companies from having commercially viable exploration programs, and then claim that shows a ‘lack of interest’ in the Arctic?” Murkowski said.
Murkowski grilled Kristen Sarri, who is nominated to be DOI’s Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget – an office she currently leads on an interim basis – on her role in the Arctic leasing decisions. Sarri largely deferred, raising new questions about why her office was not involved in these significant decisions and whether Interior conducted any analyses of their economic impacts.
Murkowski also questioned Mary Kendall, nominated to be permanent Inspector General for the Interior Department, about some of the controversies associated with her more than six-year interim tenure. Kendall’s nomination is tantamount to a lifetime appointment, but Murkowski noted that the controversies have raised “legitimate questions” about whether Kendall is “the right fit for the permanent position.”
The committee also reviewed the nominations of Dr. Suzette Kimball to be Director of the U.S. Geological Survey; Dr. Cherry Murray to be the Department of Energy’s Director of the Office of Science; Victoria Wassmer to be DOE Under Secretary of Energy; and John Kotek to be Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy.
Murkowski did strike a more positive note about the three DOE nominees.
