Underneath the glaciers polar bears patrol along Alaska’s North Slope, the decayed bodies of their ancestors who trod there eons ago have left trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, an energy bonanza for the modern world.
That jackpot reservoir has left present-day Alaskans puzzling over how to divide the booty: How much do we need to keep for ourselves, and how much can we export?
The answers lie hundreds or even thousands of miles away, among lawmakers in Juneau, in oil and gas company executive suites in New York and Texas, and in capitals of potential buyers spread across the Asian rim. The solutions are being sought while warfare has erupted against Iran, which makes Alaska’s supply even more attractive, and the pockets of natural gas that state residents currently draw on are dwindling.
“Yet again, Alaskans are wondering why, with a huge amount of North Slope natural gas, we are going to increase our dependence on some of the world’s most unstable regions,” Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and former Sen. Mark Begich wrote in the Juneau Empire on March 30. “The answer, in part, is that we have failed to develop our own energy resources.”
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