I am glad to see someone running for office who emphasizes the need for thinking and acting in the interest of the state of Alaska’s future. The recently announced partnership of Walker and Mallott for our state’s highest offices has given me hope in the future.
The recent vote on SB 21 left me wondering, what are people thinking? For me, the question was what will serve the future best; at peak production the North Slope was producing 2,000,000 barrels of oil per day, at a value of $25 a barrel; today it is producing 500,000 bbl/day at $100/bbl. Let’s look at these figures:
$25 x 2mm bbl = $50,000,000/day;
$100 x 500,000 = ? uh, $50,000,000/day.
ACES, as I understand it was to assure the state its “equitable share.”
Well, going back to being excited about someone or specifically our legislators working for a “Sustained Alaska” I ask myself when is it a benefit to the future to give away a limited resource? We have influential people saying we must extract more of the limited resource at a lower return, but there is another thought: If the resource is left in the ground and its value inflates to double its value then extracted at an “equitable share,” are we not better custodians of the future we have been entrusted with?
I would like to explain here that I don’t think our elected representatives are bad people, evil-minded and without conscience, but I do believe that money has too great of an influence on our political system.
We all know the power of influence, and when an idea or opinion can be infused into the daily routine of a population the outcome will be fiction confused as fact.
I do not believe that any Alaskan would say, “give me this now, I don’t care what the future generations have.” I earnestly believe we do not want to strip the creeks of fish, the land of vegetation and promise, or our resource in the earth from benefiting all Alaskans both now and in the future.
If you believe for some reason you are special and deserve all these things for your personal benefit, then I do not think you are one of us.
We live in a “Garden of Eden” and we are the custodians of it. If we fail I believe we will be cast out.
John Fenske
