Saudi Attacks Highlight Need for Alaska Oil & Gas Project Support

September 18, 2019

This weekend’s attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing facility – the nations’ largest – not only disrupts the world’s oil supplies, but highlights the need for continued investment and advancement of American oilfields.

Here in Alaska, there are several new fields in the regulatory and/or development process.

In Cook Inlet, several producers have projects in-production or in the prospect phase.  Many of these companies hold additional lease sites, and this could be a large job creation project.

On the North Slope, Hilcorp’s Moose Pad started production this past April, while Glacier, Eni, Repsol, Oil Search, Chevron, Shell, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips all have projects in-place or in the permitting/exploration process.  The 2018-19 winter drilling season was the busiest in years, and with Hilcorp’s purchase of BP Alaska’s properties, there is exceptional excitement about Prudhoe Bay’s future, as well as the possibility of the next great United States reserve underneath the coastal plain of ANWR.

Alaska is currently the sixth-largest oil-producing state in the US, behind Texas, North Dakota, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Colorado.  The potential opportunities in Alaska could bring us up that list to a solid fourth, and possibly even third, depending on ANWR.  The potential projects could add tens of thousands of jobs and billions in revenue to state and federal coffers, and continue the push toward American energy independence and dominance.

Let’s hope those environmental obstructionist individuals and organizations, whose sole mission is to minimize fossil fuel-based jobs as quickly as possible, are minimized by public opinion soon. Alaska’s economic future depends on our ability to continue with responsible development.  Power The Future will be behind those projects that add prosperity to the Alaskan landscape.