Their
message for the White House? You don't know ANWR.
By Rod Kackley in PJ Media
The only legislator in America to
have been born and raised in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge told PJM
he was “flabbergasted” by President Obama’s move to shut down oil and
natural gas exploration and production in ANWR.
“I was floored by it,” Alaska Rep.
Benjamin Nageak said. “I wasn’t prepared to hear such a statement from the
leader of the free world. I don’t think he knows exactly what he did.”
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
(ANWR) is the largest National Wildlife Refuge in the nation. It covers nearly
19.3 million acres of northeast Alaska, in what is known as the Alaska Northern
Slope region.
The White House released a video to explain the Obama
administration’s thinking on why more than 12 million acres in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge had to be set aside as a federally protected
wilderness area.
“Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge
is an incredible place…but it’s very fragile,” Obama said in the video.
Nageak, who represents the ANWR area
in the Alaska State House, said that’s true enough, but he is worried about the
fragility of the Alaskan economy and the lifestyle of his family and friends
who live in ANWR.
What Obama has done, Nageak said,
and will explain to the nation’s chief executive if he ever has a chance, is
lock up the only source of revenue — oil and natural gas — available to the
people who live in the Arctic.
“The result will be more dependence
on the federal government,” Nageak said.
Nageak said he would have no problem
teaming up with the Republican majority in the Alaska Legislature and working
with the state’s Republican congressional delegation to change minds in the
Oval Office and on Capitol Hill.
The GOP majority is firmly on
Nageak’s side in this debate over opening ANWR and has been for years.
The Democrat and his Republican
colleagues in the Alaska Legislature have advocated to presidents, members of
Congress and anyone who would listen.
“This is just another example of why
our caucus is committed to stopping federal overreach,” Alaska House Speaker
Mike Chenault (R) said. “Alaska’s not a territory anymore and it’s high time
our federal overlords stopped trying to treat us like one.”
“The Department of the Interior is
proposing an outlandish and preposterous plan, once again trying to assert rule
without taking into meaningful account the voices and wishes of the people
their decision will most closely effect,” he added.
Designating more than 12 million
acres as wilderness — including the oil and gas rich Coastal Plain — would kill
any hope for development, and breaks a promise made when Alaska became the 49th
state that Alaskans would be given a chance to build their own future, Alaska
House Majority Leader Charisse Millet (R) said.
“This proposal, if pushed through,
would directly oppose that, stifling the will of Alaskans and our ability to
self-govern. Alaskans, frankly, won’t stand for it,” said Millet.
“I will work with our caucus, the
Alaska Senate, the governor and our congressional delegation to put an end to
this nonsense once and for all. Alaskans deserve better than we’re getting from
President Obama and his Interior secretary,” she added.
Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) said
Obama’s ANWR plan could not have come at a worse time for Alaska.
The state has been hammered by
plunging oil prices. Alaska is drawing down more than $10 million from savings
every day because of the drop in prices and declining production.
Walker is thinking about taking more
direction action – pumping oil as fast as possible on state land.
“Having just given to Alaskans the
State of the State and State of the Budget addresses, it’s clear that our
fiscal challenges in both the short and long term would benefit significantly
from increased oil production,” Walker said.
“This action by the federal
government is a major setback toward reaching that goal.”
Gov. Walker said imposing wilderness
status on ANWR would permanently place off-limits the United States’ most
promising onshore oil production.
Walker pointed out it would also
severely restrict access for subsistence hunters and other uses of the area
because the order bans motorized vehicles from the protected area.
Nageak said it is evident Obama
doesn’t understand the lifestyle of the people who live in ANWR.
“There are few jobs available in the
Arctic. We live off the land. We still eat quail. We still eat fish. We still
eat caribou and we still eat polar bears,” Nageak explained. “And we are not
going to stop that because it is healthier for you.”
As other Alaskan politicians like
Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R) and Dan Sullivan (R) have said, Nageak believes the
fight for ANWR is about more than the environment and oil and natural gas
drilling.
Murkowski and Sullivan have said
they would fight for Alaskans’ right to control their own land.
Nageak looks at it differently
because of his heritage. He said the Obama order is a continuation of the
federal government’s practice of pushing native peoples of America off their
land and into reservations.
“We are strangers in a strange
land,” he said. “We are living on land that is not ours because the federal
government says it is theirs.”
ANWR is an acronym that stands for Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge.
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