Alaska pipeline may shut down...

Refineries too full to accept North Slope production. Pipline slowdown possable.

At midnight on April 11, a 940-foot tanker maneuvered into the dock at the oil terminal in Valdez, Alaska, carrying an unusual cargo for a returning ship. Sloshing in its tanks were more than 12 million gallons of Alaskan crude, at least a quarter of the cargo the ship had carried away from Valdez two weeks earlier.

The Alaskan Explorer had sailed to a Washington refinery but was forced to return to Alaska with 300,000 barrels because the onshore storage tanks were too full to accept it, confirmed Anil Mathur, CEO of the Alaska Tanker Co., which owns the ship.

"Not the normal course of business," said John Kotula, one of the few outsiders privy to the incident because of his position as manager of the state of Alaska's environmental office in Valdez. The tanker's inability to offload its oil underlines a startling reality: Stocks of crude oil in the U.S. have been for the last two years at historic highs, while Americans are using decreasing amounts of its most important product - gasoline.

But federal statistics show another recent development: West Coast refineries are decreasing their production as the domestic demand for gasoline shrinks."If there is so much crude oil around, why is the price of gasoline so high? Why is the price of heating oil so high?" asked Dan Lawn, an environmental consultant who was in the same job as Kotula for decades before he retired in 2005.

The BP refinery in northern Washington had been shut down due to a February fire when the Alaskan Explorer arrived there on April 6. But that doesn't explain the tanker's return to Valdez with a big load of oil. Refinery spokesman Bill Kidd acknowledged that in normal times, the ship would have offloaded the remainder of its cargo at one of three nearby refineries.

An unusual position: Hauling oil to Valdez - a remote town that still supplies a big portion of the West Coast's oil - is carrying the proverbial coal to Newcastle. It is a sign that the American oil industry is in a very un-accustomed place. Government statistics show gasoline isn't selling the way it used to, and on any given day crude oil could be backed up in storage tanks ranging from Valdez to the San Francisco Bay to Long Beach. "Valdez inventories are pretty high. Our inventories are high. Nobody is taking much crude on the West Coast," Kidd said.

So why aren't gasoline prices pushed downward by the forces of supply and demand? "You've keyed into an interesting puzzle, a paradox," said Richard Newell, professor of energy and environmental economics at Duke University and until last year the head of the federal Energy Information Administration, an arm of the Energy Department that tracks industry statistics.

The answer is the power of the world market. "We are tied to the global market, the global price for oil," said Rayola Dougher, senior economic adviser at the American Petroleum Institute. "We cannot secede."
The profitable oil production industry benefits from the fact that it operates within a global market. Fuel conservation in the United States cannot overcome the rising hydrocarbon demand in emerging markets like China and India, Newell said. The price stays up even where more local market pressures might force it down.

Nationally, the average retail price for all grades of gasoline as of last Monday was $3.93 a gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration - about the same as this time last year but up more than a dollar since April 2010. The highest prices are mostly on the West Coast.

Limited gesture: The Obama administration has proposed better oversight of the commodities market that trades in oil futures, but it is a limited gesture. The markets that set crude prices are different for Scandinavian, West Texas and Arabian oil. "The dynamics in the United States are the opposite of what is occurring at a global level," Newell said. When prices at American gasoline stations go down - or up - it will be for reasons other than U.S. intervention or our improved driving habits, he said.

Lower consumption hasn't brought U.S. prices down or eliminated our dependence on foreign oil. Even though exports are up, the United States still imports around 11 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products per day, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Consumer demand for gasoline in the U.S. started faltering in 2005 and has been falling "very sharply" since 2007, said Houston-based oil industry analyst Pavel Molchanov of Raymond James & Associates.
"We think (demand) is going to go down in perpetuity," Molchanov said.

People are driving less, because of the economy and the aging of baby boomers, said James Beck, a lead petroleum supply analyst for the Energy Information Administration. Newer cars get better mileage and are replacing the gas-guzzling older ones.

From Ray Metcalfe 907-344-4514 RayinAK@aol.com

So how is it that Parnell's plan will work? Alaskan's need to know.

http://www.chron.com/business/article/U-S-awash-in-oil-but-global-demand-drives-prices-3517269.php

Houston Chronicle

U.S. awash in oil, but global demand drives prices

By Eric Nalder

Toward natural gas: Meanwhile, natural gas is cheap. Buses and commercial vehicles are turning away from oil and toward compressed or liquid natural gas, and the petrochemical industry is replacing oil with natural gas for feedstock, Molchanov said.

Gulf Coast and West Coast refineries consequently are making more product than they can sell locally. They are exporting it, notably to Central and South America, in volumes not seen in half a century, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Some East Coast refineries face possible shutdowns because of falling demand and gasoline imports from Europe, Beck said.

"The surging growth in U.S. oil supply has turned North American crude dynamics upside down," industry analysts Cory Garcia and Stacey Hudson said in a March briefing paper distributed by Raymond James & Associates.

Advanced drilling technologies are sucking new crude oil supplies out of landlocked North Dakota, while a pipeline bottleneck at the key hub in Cushing, Okla., has slowed the path to refineries in Texas and Louisiana. The results are a glut of crude oil in the middle of the country, as well as environmental concerns about the drilling techniques. "Clearly, it will take some time (and pipeline capacity) in order to fully clear this supply glut," Garcia and Hudson wrote.

Nearly full tanks: The storage tanks in Valdez were more than 90 percent full the day the Alaskan Explorer arrived with its odd load, said Michelle Egan, spokeswoman for terminal operator Alyeska. She downplayed the significance of those full tanks, noting that they were not so full a few weeks earlier.
But Egan also acknowledged that Alyeska officials begin worrying when the storage tanks at the terminal are over 90 percent full. Such a glut could force a slowdown of oil production on the North Slope. That would reduce flow in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, she said, which can result in increased maintenance problems.
The price of gasoline, meanwhile, is still near four bucks a gallon.

"Both the supply side and demand side in the U.S. are moving in a direction that you would think would underpin falling prices," Newell said. "But the global market rules."

WRONG EVOLUTIONARY PATH

                            CARBON ENERGY SCIENCE

©By Henry Kroll

                        From my book, COSMOLOGICAL ICE AGES

            The bulk of the energy consumed on this planet is still generated by the burning of carbon. Where did all the carbon come from, you ask? 
            After our sun left its birthplace in Orion Earth and Mars went into the Huronian Glaciation where mile deep sheets of ice covered the single ocean and there was five-mile deep inc on the single continent known as Pangaea. All of the carbon at the core of the Earth came from the dust clouds in Orion. The iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones and the other elements that make up our reality mostly came from Orion however some of it is space dust.
            At that time about 700-million years ago Earth had a high pressure carbon dioxide atmosphere of around 750 pounds per square inch. The atmosphere extended three thousand miles above the planet. There was no way for sunlight to get through such an atmosphere to make the plankton bloom in the oceans to release free oxygen. A billion years is a long time to drift in the cold of space. {SIRIUS A and little SIRIUS B below.}

              








































         {You got to understand that it's difficult to get good pictures of Sirius B because the light is invisible and glass lenses filter out UV.} 


Our solar  system eventually drifted between the the two giant stars Procyon and Sirius. These giant two-solar-mass, stars may have been swapped into out galaxy during one of many past galactic collisions. Sirius B used to be 6 solar masses before it became a white dwarf ejecting 3.5 solar masses of silicon and iron in the neighborhood. Earth collected a lot of that iron dust which bound up the free oxygen as soon as it was released by plants. We were much closer to Sirius A and little Sirius B and Sirius B with 1.5 solar masses (more gravity than our Sun) came around, grabbed hold of our Sun and put it into a nice tight orbit around Sirius A.


We became part of the Sirius System for the next 750-million years. Sirius B puts out more than 100 times the Ultraviolet Light of our sun in the invisible 350 to 400 nano meter wave length. Plants, however like this light. 


Sirius B is the only thing out there capable of penetrating a 3,000-mile deep atmosphere. The reason I wrote the huge book was to make people understand where coal, oil, gas and limestone come from. When you are driving down the road most of the energy that makes your car move came from Sirius B!
  
{You can read all about the history of Earth in my book, COSMOLOGICAL ICE AGES.}


           Earth was half as big as it is today. There was one ocean and one continent. This CO2 atmosphere continuously being replenished by volcanoes but over time due to the yearly accretion of 40-thousand tons of space dust and expansion of the mid ocean volcanic rifts over hundreds of million years the Earth expanded to its present size. It was this process of expansion that the atmospheric pressure was reduced by half.

            The other half of Earth’s high pressure atmosphere was used up by photosynthesis and laid down as col, oil and limestone. Where did the 20.8 % oxygen atmosphere come from? During the 80-million year Carboniferous Age 400-million years ago the Sun was in a much closer orbit to another group of stars that increased the average Earth temperature to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. One of those stars puts out more than 100 times the ultraviolet light of our sun above the range of human sight. Earth had incoming ultraviolet light 24 hours a day. In a few short months diatoms filled up the oceans to depths of 30,000 feet deep or more. Diatoms have the ability to multiply eight times in 24 hours given enough CO2, warm temperatures and 24-hours of light.

Most people don’t know what diatoms are. They are the little calcium carbonate creatures they use to filter your drinking water and fill your cat litter box. They evolved different shapes to survive at different depths in the oceans to take advantage of the different wave lengths of UV light. Most large oil fields are ancient meteor impacts that fused the hydrogen in the water with the carbon to make hydrocarbons. If you were to read my book COSMOLOGICAL ICE AGES you will discover that some other sources of oil is made from the subduction of continental plates that melt the limestone sheets which are composed of calcium carbonate. Then you have the shale oil which is still made of carbonate ocean sediments. 

    After John D. Rockefeller discovered oil on the beach in Quait in the 1920’s and his company Standard Oil started making billions, other government-subsidized companies like Sinclair Oil (sin clear) and Winsor Oil (now British Petroleum) got on the band wagon. That’s when we became energy slaves.

Practically every war since was fought over oil plus other resource like lithium or gold. Religion is just a cover. The reason they left FREEDOM OF RELIGION in the constitution in the first place was so they could pit one fanatical group against another. Wake up people!

 All wars are rich men wars. They manipulate nations to create wars to make them richer. They sell arms to both sides of the conflict. They have their banks loan money to both sides to buy the arms from their factories thereby putting both nations in debt. When the war is over they step in to rebuild pretending to be charitable good Samaritans but they take the gold oil and drugs as compensation. It’s known as the GOD trade.

STEELHEAD PLATFORM COOK INLET ALASKA

The reason I wrote COSMOLOGICAL ICE AGES was to enlighten people as to where the energy came from that make their cars go down the road. By plotting our course through space I discovered the light source that created the coal, oil and limestone. It may be alright for humanity to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is plant food and CO2 is a trace gas amounting to only .033% of our atmosphere. It’s a trace gas necessary to feed people yet our government wants to use your tax dollars to pump it underground. You can’t grow food without it. Go figure! How dumb is that? Wake up people!

Ninety-eight percent of the atmosphere on this planet is gone. Originally when Earth came out of the billion-year Huronian Glaciation with a 750 PSI atmosphere. Now it is down to 14.5 PSI at sea level. 

We lost ½ the oxygen-producing plankton in the oceans. Two thirds of the oxygen-producing rain forests have been cut down and burned to make charcoal while the rich corporations want to keep us using up the oxygen by burning things forever.

Back in the 1950's our government created the mega farms to out-produce the Communists using fertilizer made from natural gas and mechanized agriculture that uses oil. Now most all our soil is depleted of minerals. Poor farming methods caused half our topsoil to blown away in the Dust Bowl washed down rivers into the oceans. Half the fish in the oceans  are gone. God gave us dominion over the planet. What’s he going to do when he comes back to find out what we have done?

Where do we go from here? Hundreds of millions of people died fighting over oil. Don’t forget our brave soldiers who so willingly gave their lives in these wars.  
Below is a picture of the Grayling platform blowout in Cook Inlet. The got the men off safely with a helicopter. By some miracle it never caught fire. It blew ocean water up over 1000 feet for an entire week then it subsided to about 500 feet above the rig for over a month. How much gas was wasted is anybody's guess--probably enough to light up New York City for a couple years.

Seemingly timed to coincide both with Earth Day and President Obama's proposed expansion of corporate access to U.S. waters for offshore oil drilling, the April 20 explosion of the Transocean oil rig Deepwater Horizon has exposed how risky offshore oil drilling can be, particularly in deep water in the absence of effective regulation. The sinking of the oil rig April 22 (Earth Day) led to the deaths of 11 oil rig workers – not the first BP safety violations – and could lead to the contamination of wide swaths of the Gulf Coast, or even, because of the loop current (map), large swaths of Florida, the Florida Keys and the entire East Coast.

Originally, authorities said the broken well was spilling 1,000 barrels a day. Then the Gulf oil spill was upgraded to 5,000 barrels a day. But independent scientists have said there could be 5-10 times as much oil spilling from the well, and BP's only successful attempt at mitigation is capturing just 1,000 barrels a day. The oil slick on the surface is bigger than Connecticut, but the spill at other depths is likely far larger, and threatens marine life throughout the ocean food chain. If independent estimates are correct, the spill is already larger than the Exxon Valdez. 

BP OIL SPILL

[The Exxon Valdez spill was 22 million gallons not 11.]

Usumacinta

2. First fire in Kab-121 well

Introduction

The Usumacinta is a mat-supported jack-up based on the Bethlehem JU-200-MC design. It was delivered in 1982 by Bethlehem Steel in Singapore and is currently owned by Perforadora Central of Mexico. In October 2007, the Usumacinta was contracted to drill at PEMEX's Kab-101 platform in the Bay of Campeche. The Kab-101 platform is a light production Sea Pony type platform, installed by PEMEX in 1994, which had two wells producing a daily output of around 5700 bbls oil and 700,000 cubic feet of natural gas. The Usumacinta was contracted to complete drilling work on a third well, named Kab-103, when it collided with the Kab-101 platform and ruptured the Kab-101's production tree.

Storm Collision

On Sunday, 21 October 2007, the Usumacinta was brought into position alongside the Kab-101 platform to finish drilling the Kab-103 well. By Tuesday, 23 October, a cold weather front passed through the Gulf of Mexico bringing storm winds of 130km/hr with waves of 6-8m. The adverse weather conditions caused oscillating movements of Usumacinta jack-up from around 1200 hours on the 23 October. These movements caused the cantilever deck of the Usumacinta to strike the top of the production valve tree on the Kab-101 platform, resulting in a leak of oil and gas. At 1420 hours, the subsurface safety valves of wells 101 and 121 were closed by PEMEX personnel, but the valves were unable to seal completely allowing the continued leaking of oil and gas. At around 1535 hours on 23 October, the 81 personnel on the Usumacinta were evacuated by lifeboat, with the ship Morrison Tide providing fire support. Rough seas hampered the rescue operation and appear to have caused the break-up of at least one liferaft.

Well control personnel were despatched to the Kab-101, with operations delayed by further bad weather and H2S release. Well control operations commenced with attempts to inject heavy mud followed by cement. Operations were again delayed on 13 November when a spark initiated by on-going work caused a fire to break out. The fire was extinguished the following day on 14 November at 2350 hours. A second fire broke out on 20 November, causing the collapse of the Usumacinta's derrick and major damage to the cantilever and connecting bridge. The fire was extinguished the same day with no injuries.

Several phases of work then commenced, including debris removal from the Usumacinta, the attachment of a valve for controlled flaring, the installation of a blow-out preventer and finally the shutting in of the well followed by killing with heavy mud and plugging with cement. By 17 December 2007, PEMEX reported complete control of the well.

Aftermath

There were 21 reported deaths during the evacuation of the Usumacinta, with one worker missing, presumed dead.

Deadliest Accidents

	Incident	Fatalities
	1. Piper Alpha Occidental's Piper Alpha platform was destroyed by explosion and fire in 1988. 167 workers were killed in the blaze.	167
	2. Alexander L. Kielland In 1980, the accommodation rig Alexander L. Kielland capsized during a storm after a leg support brace failed.	123
	3. Seacrest Drillship The Seacrest drillship capsized in 1989 during Typhoon Gay, with the loss of 91 crew.	91
	4. Ocean Ranger A ballast control malfunction caused the Ocean Ranger to capsize during a ferocious storm in the North Atlantic in 1982, with the loss of all hands.	84
	5. Glomar Java Sea Drillship Another storm fatality, the Glomar Java Sea capsized and sank during Typhoon Lex in 1983 with the loss of all on board.	81
	6. Bohai 2 In 1979, the jack-up Bohai 2 capsized and sank in a storm while on tow off the coast of China.	72
	7. Brent Field Chinook Helicopter A Chinook helicopter shuttle between the Brent Field and Sumburgh crashed into the North Sea in 1986 with only two survivors.	45
	8. Enchova Central During a blowout on the Enchova Central off Brazil, 42 workers lost their lives attempting to evacuate the platform.	42
	9- C. P. Baker Drilling Barge Built in 1962 using an uncommon catamaran design, the C. P. Baker drilling barge burned and sank after a shallow gas blowout.	22
	9- Mumbai (Bombay) High North A support vessel collided with Mumbai High North in 2005, rupturing a riser and causing a major fire that destroyed the platform.	22
	9- Usumacinta Storm winds caused the Usumacinta jack-up to strike the adjacent Kab-101 platform, resulting in a fatal evacuation and blowout in 2007.

Most Expensive Accidents

	Incident	Cost (2002 US$)
	1. Piper Alpha Occidental's Piper Alpha platform was destroyed by explosion and fire in 1988. 167 workers were killed in the blaze.	$1,270,000,000
	2. Petrobras P36 In 2001, an explosion destabilised the P36 production rig in the Campos Basin, Brazil, eventually causing it to sink.	$515,000,000
	3. Enchova Central Petrobras' Enchova PCE-1 Platform suffered twice with blowouts and fire in both 1984 and 1988, ending with the loss of the platform in 1988.	$461,000,000
	4. Sleipner A A design error resulted in the structural failure in 1991 of the gravity base unit of the original Sleipner A platform.	$365,000,000
	5. Mississippi Canyon 311 A (Bourbon) In 1987, the Mississippi Canyon 311 A Bourbon platform in the Gulf of Mexico was tilted to one side by an extensive underground blowout.	$274,000,000
	6. Mighty Servant 2 The Mighty Servant 2 struck a rock and sank off Indonesia whilst carrying platform modules in 1999.	$220,000,000
	7. Mumbai (Bombay) High North A support vessel collided with Mumbai High North in 2005, rupturing a riser and causing a major fire which destroyed the platform.	$195,000,000 (2005)
	8. Steelhead Platform A blowout in 1987 led to six months of trouble for the Steelhead Platform, resulting in fire and extensive platform damage.	$171,000,000
	9. Name not known 1993: Explosion and fire destroyed a platform control room and damaged adjacent platforms on Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, with eleven fatalites.	$122,000,000
	10. Petronius A In 1998, a crane load line broke while lifting the south topside module of the Petronius platform, dropping the module into the Gulf of Mexico. Offshore Blowouts Five Worst Blowouts Volume Released 1. Sedco 135F and the IXTOC-1 Well In 1979, the IXTOC-1 blowout flowed uncontrollably in the Bahia de Campeche, Mexico until it was capped 9 months later. 3,500,000 barrels 2. Ekofisk Bravo Platform Phillips Petroleum's Ekofisk B platform experienced an 8-day oil and gas blowout in 1977 during a production well workover. 202,381 barrels 3. Funiwa No. 5 Well Oil from the 1980 Funiwa 5 blowout polluted the Niger Delta for 2 weeks, followed by fire and the eventual bridging of the well. 200,000 barrels 4. Hasbah Platform Well 6 Drilled in 1980 by the Ron Tappmeyer jack-up, exploratory well No. 6 blew out in the Persian Gulf for 8 days and cost the lives of 19 men. 100,000 barrels 5. Union Oil Platform Alpha Well A-21 The 1969 Union Oil Platform A blowout lasted 11 days but continued leaking oil into the Santa Barbara Channel for months afterwards. 80,000 barrels x Other Notable Blowouts Remarks Adriatic IV A blowout and fire in 2004 destroyed both the Adriatic IV jack-up and Temsah gas platform off the Egyptian coast. Al Baz Santa Fe's Al Baz jack-up burned and sank after a blowout in 1989 with the loss of 5 lives. 5 fatalities Arabdrill 19 A leg punch-through in 2002 led to a blowout and fire which sank both the Arabdrill 19 and a production platform in Saudi's Khafji Field. 3 fatalities Blake IV and Greenhill Petroleum Corp. Well 250 In 1992, Greenhill Petroleum's workover oil well blew out in Timbalier Bay, igniting after 2 days and taking 11 days to cap. Major release C.P. Baker Drilling Barge Built in 1962 using an uncommon catamaran design, the C. P. Baker drilling barge burned and sank after a shallow gas blowout. 22 fatalities Enchova Central Petrobras' Enchova Platform suffered twice with blowouts and fire in both 1984 and 1988, ending with the loss of the platform in 1988. 42 fatalities	$116,000,000

Government destroys private sector to sell oil leases.

Open letter sent to newspapers, radio and TV stations:

Government destroys ecosystem and steals your livelihood.
In the 1970’s I had a good life. I lived in Halibut Cove in a house that I had built with my own two hands. I had a wife that love me, four good children who were learning how to fish salmon and crab. I had a shop building to work on my fishing gear and numerous out buildings. I owned a 72’ boat that I had rebuilt to catch king crab and tanners to provide for my family. I had worked on the old Mary M many years even running it to Seattle twice to change the engine and do hull repairs. I had worked extremely had to reach that point. I was creating work by providing jobs for three desk hands and I was earning close to two hundred thousand dollars a year.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s Cook Inlet had a 3.5 million pound to 4.5 million pound king crab quota for the outer district from Cape Douglass, Barren Islands up to Anchor Point. Kachemak Bay had an additional 3.5 million pound quota which kept us busy for two to three months. After that in November 15 they opened the tanner season for another 3-million pound quota. All that crab and shrimp amounted to from 30 to 60-million dollars that went directly into the private sector. This also helped municipalities, grocery stores, fuel distributors and a little trickled down into everyone’s pocket.
Little by little my livelihood was destroyed. The crab because fewer and fewer and Alaska Department of Fish and Game extended the quotas as if they were trying to wipe out the fishery. ADF&G allowed large shrimp draggers to come into the bay and virtually wipe out the shrimp population. Kachemak Bay, once referred to as the most productive bay in the world was eventually closed down to commercial fishing by the Democrat Governor Tony Knowles.
In installed a single sideband marine radio in our house so that I could talk to my wife and pursued the Kodiak king crab and tanner fishery. When I would get home after three months with little to show for it my wife would unload all her problems on me. This went on for two or three years and she eventually took up with one of my employees so I lost my wife and my family.
I ranged further and further from home to make a living eventually running 24 hours south of Kodiak Island to fish out of Nakawalak Bay near Chignik. I set up headquarters in Port Wrangle which had no facilities but offered good shelter from the weather.
My boat was too small and too old to compete in the Baring Sea fishery. I couldn’t get a loan to buy a bigger boat because the politicians in Seattle control who gets loan guarantees from National Marine Fisheries. If you were from Alaska your chances of getting a boat loan were much less than if you from Washington, Oregon or California.

Unbeknownst to me, the oil and contaminated drilling mud from 23 oil wells in the upper Cook Inlet were leaking into the lower inlet polluting the waters and killing plankton, shrimp and crab spat.
Additionally the State of Alaska allowed the oil tankers to pump oily ballast water into Cook Inlet more than twenty years. When the tankers departed the open sea and entered the mouth of Cook Inlet by the Barren Islands they started pumping dirty ballast water from such harbors as Los Angeles, Anacortes and San Francisco. By the time they reached Drift River Terminal and the Texaco refinery in Nikiski their ballast water tanks were empty and ready to take on oil.
If you don’t believe me do the math. One tanker dumps 30 to 50-million gallons of ballast water. A hundred tankers a year will pump out 300 to 500 million gallons of algae contaminated ballast water. Ten years and you have three to five billion gallons of algae and oil contaminated ballast water that sucks up oxygen from the oxygen-rich waters of Cook Inlet and Kodiak.
They eventually constructed a ballast water treatment plant in Nikiski. It didn’t go on line until 1984 but by that time it was too late to save the crab and shrimp fisheries. It was also broke down half the time. The tankers didn’t want to use it because it caused them down time waiting for the ballast water to be removed. It also made the ships draw more water on the run up Cook slowing them down.
The point of this article is the state wanted to get rid of all commercial crab and shrimp fisheries in lower Cook Inlet so that the State and Feds could put oil wells all over Cook Inlet. Then the State of Alaska sued the feds costing taxpayers millions of dollars in a futile attempt to claim the oil rights out to twelve miles offshore. The government had plans to make lower Cook Inlet look like the Gulf of Mexico with a hundred oil wells in every direction but it never happened—probably because there isn’t much oil there.
The result of all this insane oil for seafood tradeoff was that the cities of Homer, Seldovia and Port Graham lost an income of 30-million to 60-million dollars a year that went directly into the pockets of the townspeople. It helped the grocery stores, bars, construction of new houses, fuel distributors, increased jobs and increased taxes to municipalities. Not only was this a hardship inflicted on fishermen, it was a theft of resources from citizens.
The reason the Bearing Sea still has a fishery is there are no oil tankers plying the waters and fewer ship traffic dumping oily ballast water. Nobody seems to understand this and nobody cares. You would think that if you had no job that you would be more cognoscente of the harvest of resources which is driving force of any economy.
Sincerely,
Henry Kroll
“Thanks for opening your heart.” –Bob Shadelson, Attorney, Cook Inlet Keeper.