Sullivan Comments on Statoil’s Withdrawal from Alaska
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) issued the following statement in response to the news that Statoil is closing its Alaska office and pulling out of the state.
“This is extremely bad news for our state. When I was Alaska’s Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources, I remember the excitement surrounding the opening of Statoil’s office in Anchorage, just as I remember the excitement surrounding Shell’s Arctic drilling program. At that time, I don’t think that most Alaskans could have imagined that it would be our own federal government that would kill, through over burdensome regulations and uncertainty, the great promise of energy development in the Arctic OCS. As Shell’s CEO put it recently about drilling in Arctic waters off Alaska’s coast, ‘(W)e are of the view that the US government should simplify and modernize the permit processes there, if there is any ambition to develop oil and gas in the offshore of Alaska.’ I’ll keep fighting to modernize our permitting process—both offshore and onshore, where there are still billions of barrels of oil and trillions of feet of natural gas—in order to bring much needed energy security to our country, and economic security to Alaskans.”
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