Cost to Shell of Kulluk grounding? $90 million and counting.

[Blue_In_AK]

This is a long but very informative post by my friend Phil Munger at ProgressiveAlaska regarding Shell's ongoing problems with their arctic drilling plans this past season. If you have missed all this news, there are good links within the article. I wish the administration would pull the plug on this.

http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2013/02/cost-to-shell-of-kulluk-grounding-90.html

Thursday, at Shell Oil's annual Results Conference in London, Shell CEO Peter Voser delivered a prepared address on the company's global performance during 2012. It included little information about the energy giant's 2012 Alaska Arctic drilling season fiascos we don't already know:

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Reporter Paulin's statement about Shell lobbyists in Juneau is, if anything, understatement. During the same day Shell CEO Vosser was delivering his annual report, in Juneau, the oil industry was flexing its muscle as it only can in Alaska.

The 2012 election brought an end to a Senate bipartisan coalition that dated back to shortly after the FBI busted a number of Alaska legislators for taking bribes from the major oil field service company in Alaska, Veco. Although it was understood at the time that Veco's bribers were working on behalf of oil giant ConocoPhillips, no employees from the latter were ever indicted by the Justice Department. The crooked legislators smugly called themselves "The Corrupt Bastards Club," and even had baseball caps made with the term plastered across them.

Replacing the bipartisan Senate coalition is a new GOP-run super majority that is intent on ramming through Senate Bill 21, which will repeal the most important element of Alaska's taxation of oil fields here, and strip billions of dollars per year from state coffers and give it to immensely wealthy oil companies, like ConocoPhillips, British Petroleum and Exxon-Mobil.

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Here's Shell CEO Peter Voser's take:

'I cannot say what the learning is at this stage. But let me also say, and I know this is always dangerous to say because it will generate the headlines, but I have not seen in the world any business, not just the energy business, but all businesses — they have risks at the end of the day. And you need to manage those risks, and we do it is as good as we can. We learn when it doesn’t work and we will manage these risks going forward. But I cannot say there will never be an incident — that just isn’t going to work.'

Let me put it another way for Mr. Voser:

Shell Oil took every risk it could this past season: outfitting old drilling and response units hurriedly, even though they've had years to prepare; pushing modifications beyond the limits of prudent engineering; putting pressure on professional mariners to risk equipment - and LIVES.

The only miracle of this season is that there aren't as many dead bodies up here in Alaska as were blown up or burnt to death on the Deepwater Horizon.

Alaska's resources, including the oil and gas, are owned collectively by the state and people of Alaska, so this "tax" they speak of is really just them paying us for our product. Our current scheme, the one good thing that Sarah Palin did, assures that the oil companies pay Alaskans their fair share when the companies' profits are high. Governor Parnell wants to give them a $2 billion a year break (allegedly to incentivize them to increase production) but with absolutely no assurance that they won't take the money and invest it elsewhere. He was a ConocoPhillips lobbyist before he was Sarah Palin's lieutenant governor, plus he worked for the law firm that represented Exxon during the spill litigation. And yet he wants us to trust him and them. As if...

Alaska politics is never boring.