Energy Economy

Alaska’s Cook Inlet is a microcosm of the fossil-fuel industry, and provides an excellent platform to address the root causes of climate change and other impacts from oil, gas and coal development.  For example, Cook Inlet includes onshore and offshore oil and gas drilling, over 1,000 miles of oil/gas pipelines, tankers, a large capacity petroleum refinery, a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export plant, a major petrochemical (fertilizer) facility, and a new Gas-to-Liquids refining facility.

Cook Inlet is also the only waterbody in the nation where offshore oil and gas operators may legally dump their toxic wastes directly into coastal fisheries, and it’s the only major port in North America that lacks tug escorts for laden oil and liquefied natural gas tankers, despite the region’s notorious tides, ice and navigational conditions.

In addition to oil and gas, Outside investors announced plans in 2006 to develop Cook Inlet’s massive Beluga coal fields as part of the Chuitna Coal Project.  This project would strip up to a billion tons of coal from an area 45 miles west of Anchorage that supports incredible fish and wildlife resources.  Aside from the direct effects on salmon, moose and bear habitat, the combustion of Beluga coal will generate enormous amounts of greenhouse gases and add mercury to the atmosphere, where it can fall-out into Alaskan fish and the people who consume them.  As a result, today in Cook Inlet, we face a fork in the road: we can move backwards to coal and oil and gas development – with all their well-documented problems – or we can embrace a future that includes clean, renewable power and long term, sustainable jobs. The choice is ours, but our children will live with our decision.