Word: alaskas
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Ever since President Richard Nixon fired him as Interior Secretary in 1970, Walter Hickel has coveted the Alaska governorship he gave up to go to Washington. He has tried everything short of a coup d'etat to reclaim it -- Republican primaries, write-in campaigns, even lawsuits. Last week, at 71, Hickel found yet another way to pursue his goal: he became the candidate of the Alaskan Independence Party, a fringe group that wants the state to secede from the U.S. Hickel named as his running mate state senator Jack Coghill, 65, who defected from the No. 2 spot...
...months since the Exxon Valdez spewed 11 million gal. of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, controversy has dogged the cleanup efforts. The debate continued last week, as Exxon ended a second summer of mopping up and declared the cleanup over unless its survey next spring proves a need for more. The tab so far: $2 billion plus. Alaskan officials were not quite so upbeat. Insisting that "substantial oil remains," outgoing Governor Steve Cowper said, "We can't take a walk and let Mother Nature finish...
...size of the oil deposit, however, is a mystery. The Interior Department's estimate ranges from 600 million bbl. of crude to as much as 9.2 billion bbl. At the high end, the oil reservoir would be roughly equal to Alaska's enormous Prudhoe Bay field, or more than the U.S. uses in a year. The Interior Department puts the odds of finding a commercially exploitable oil field in the refuge at 1 in 5, vs. the industry's typical success rate...
Almost all elected officials in Alaska believe the U.S. should open the coastal plain for drilling, which could create thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in tax revenue. The Bush Administration, citing a study contending that the oil could be pumped without harming the environment, has proposed that the drilling ban be lifted. In addition, the Senate last month unanimously passed an amendment to the defense authorization bill that obliges the President to keep oil imports below 50% of domestic demand. If passed by a joint resolution of Congress, the amendment could open all federal lands outside national parks...
Advocates of drilling on the refuge emphasize that the pumping operations would involve an area only the size of Delaware, while the entire preserve is nearly as large as Maine. And the crude could be carried cheaply in the 800- mile trans-Alaska pipeline, which has a good safety record. Environmentalists, however, see the drilling as a gross intrusion on one of the last untouched wilderness areas. Many Eskimos favor development because they would legally share in the income. But the Gwich'in Indians in Arctic Village (pop. 100) near the refuge bitterly oppose it. "This is a simple issue...