Native corporations would get share of ANWR oil revenues under federal budget amendment

[thackney]

Native corporations would get share of ANWR oil revenues under federal budget amendment
https://www.adn.com/politics/2018/06/12/native-corporations-would-get-share-of-anwr-oil-revenues-under-federal-budget-amendment/
6/13/2018

Alaska's federal lawmakers are on their way to handing Native corporations a cut of state revenues from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

An amendment to a House appropriations bill for fiscal year 2019 would adjust the 50-50 state-federal revenue sharing deal, letting 3 percent of the state's share be split among all Alaska Native corporations.

In December's major federal tax legislation, an amendment bolstered by Alaska's congressional delegation — and ferried through by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Energy Committee — opened the coastal plain of ANWR to oil exploration. But because of Senate parliamentary rules, Alaska's lawmakers weren't able to include a cut for the Native corporations, according to Murkowski and Rep. Don Young.

But now the House Committee on Appropriations has approved an Interior and Environment appropriations bill that includes an amendment to share some of the state's potential ANWR revenues. Young isn't on the Appropriations Committee, but the amendment was offered by Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole on his behalf and adopted by a voice vote...

[thackney]

https://www.ktoo.org/2018/06/12/bill-would-shift-3-of-states-anwr-revenue-to-native-corporations/

...The section of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act says the regional Native corporations must share 70 percent of the revenue from certain resource development on their lands with each other. The idea was to offset wealth disparities among the corporations.

But, to the frustration of several of them, Arctic Slope Regional Corp. got subsurface ownership to a small portion of ANWR in a 1983 land exchange known as the Chandler Lake agreement. That land is not subject to the revenue sharing requirement.

Cole said his amendment fulfills the mission of 7(1).

“It is in keeping with the spirit of that legislation that there’s to be resource sharing amongst the Alaska Natives from ANWR,” Cole said.

Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., spoke against the amendment, saying the refuge is too valuable in its natural state to allow development....

[thackney]

https://www.adn.com/opinions/2018/06/13/we-may-have-answers-to-the-big-anwr-questions-soon/#5356

...Assistant Interior Secretary for Lands and Mines Joe Balash has been given marching orders by his boss, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, to get an streamlined Environmental Impact Statement done in 12 months. The clock started ticking on that in March, when the department issued its Notice of Intent to do the EIS. If the environmental review is done and Interior's Record of Decision comes in the first half of 2019, the sale itself could happen any time after that....

...Meanwhile, explorers are trying to figure out what they know, and don't know, about ANWR's potential. One initiative already underway is a proposal for a large, two-winter season advanced 3-D seismic program across the 1.5 million acres to be conducted by SA Exploration, an Alaska geophysical company, with backing by two Alaska Native corporations, Arctic Slope Regional Corp. and Kaktovik Inupiat Corp. Kaktovik is the Native corporation for Kaktovik village, an Inupiat community on Barter Island, which is adjacent to ANWR. SA Exploration is itself majority-owned by another Native corporation, Kuukpik Corp., the village corporation for Nuiqsut, near the Colville River.

All of this illustrates the unusual role that Native corporations will play in ANWR's exploration and its possible development. ASRC and KIC actually own a big chunk of the most prospective oil lands on the refuge' coastal plain, a 91,000-acre inholding in the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain section that will be leased.

Assistant Secretary Balash says these are private lands and that ASRC and Kaktovik are free to do with them as they wish, including conducting their own exploration and drilling. In fact, they've already done that. In the early 1980s, the two Native corporations concluded a deal with Chevron and BP to drill the only exploration well drilled in ANWR in 1986, on their lands. The results of that well have been confidential for decades. The extent to which ASRC is still engaged with the two companies is unknown. With lease sales pending, no one is talking....

[IsailedawayfromFR]

This is not a good thing.

[thackney]

This is not a good thing.

I tend to think it is.  They are far less likely to accept some environMENTALists money for protesting the development, as has happened in the past.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

I tend to think it is.  They are far less likely to accept some environMENTALists money for protesting the development, as has happened in the past.

I call it a bribe, and with my money.

let the wacko left pony up instead

[thackney]

I call it a bribe, and with my money.

let the wacko left pony up instead

It comes out of the State share, not the feds.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

It comes out of the State share, not the feds.

 

How is this not crony capitalism again?

[thackney]

How is this not crony capitalism again?

Some of the Land is actually owned by one of the Native Corporations.  They are trying to dodge the legal requirement to share that royalties with the other Native Corps as would normally be required by the laws that set them up.

https://www.adn.com/business-economy/energy/2017/03/14/as-hopes-for-drilling-in-anwr-rise-native-corporations-argue-over-potential-riches/

The issue dates back to the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act that established 12 Native regional corporations in the state, eventually gave them title to millions of acres of Alaska land, and divided more than $900 million cash among them. The law also required them to share 70 percent of revenues earned from the oil, gas and mineral rights they obtained under the settlement. That sharing provision became known as 7(i) for the section of ANCSA that contained it.

Rock's letter referenced a 1982 agreement among the state's regional corporations. He said subsurface lands acquired in a trade for surface lands are exempt from the 7(i) requirement.

Rock said that in 1983, ASRC exchanged surface lands at Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve — the nation's northernmost national park — for lands beneath ANWR's coastal plain.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

It comes out of the State share, not the feds.

But the state share is a handout already to the State of Alaska for royalties on minerals extracted on federal lands.  That does not occur elsewhere.

We federal taxpayers remain getting screwed by not capturing the mineral royalties which are strictly federal but for some reason have been shared with the state and soon Native Americans.