This story has been updated to reflect Rep. Don Young’s role.
The 49th state’s share of anticipated revenues from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is on the verge of being slashed by what could be close to $1 billion, and the state’s top elected officials seem strangely quiet.
After attaching an amendment to open ANWR to last year’s GOP-led tax cut that included a 50-50 state split of future ANWR royalty revenues, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was described as “ebullient.”
On May 31, Murkowski was at the Alaska Oil and Gas Association’s annual conference to take what KTVA.com described as an “Anchorage victory lap” for her ANWR success.
One week later, the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations approved a fiscal year 2019 Interior and Environment Bill that cut Alaska’s share of ANWR royalty revenue to 47 percent. The other 3 percent is to be given to Alaska Native corporations.
The provision to amend the legislation to give Native corporations the money came in the form of an amendment to the bill by Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a self-proclaimed good friend of Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska.
“The amendment adds bill language ensuring that trust and treaty obligations are met related to Alaska Native oil and gas revenue sharing,” according to a committee media statement. “The amendment was adopted on a voice vote.”
“It would be appropriate, just and meritorious action of Congress to keep these revenues within the spirit of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act,” Cole told Indianz.com, a website for Native American news. According to Cole, the idea for the new, three-way split came from Young.
How deeply involved the rest of the Alaska Congressional delegation and Gov. Bill Walker in the deal is unclear, but multiple sources have told craigmedred.news they were all aware of what was going on. Austin Baird, press secretary to Walker, promised to get a statement from the governor and call back Friday. The call never came.
Karina Peterson, the press secretary for Sen. Lisa Murkowksi, R-Alaska, did not return a phone call. Matthew Schuckerow, the deputy communications director for Sen. Dan Sullivan since November (and before that Young’s communication director and before that Murkowski’s press secretary) did not respond to an e-mail request for information.
Alaska’s political leaders have long enjoyed backing from the regional Native corporations now among the biggest businesses in the north. The corporations comprise nine of the top-10 biggest businesses in Alaska and 16 of the top-20 last year, according to Alaska Business magazine.
The corporations created by the Alaska Native Claims Act of 1971 (ANCSA) are widely credited with winning re-election for Murkowski in 2010 after she lost the Republican primary to Joe Miller from Fairbanks. The corporations poured $1.6 million into a fund to aid her in an unprecedented write-in run for a U.S. Senate seat.
The deal now being cut in the nation’s capital has its roots in what is called the “Chandalar Lake Agreement of 1983.” The agreement dealt with 92,000 acres of land selected by the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation (KIC) under the terms of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, according to the Congressional Research Service.
“Because the Refuge was created before ANCSA, the Arctic Slope Regional
Corporation (ASRC) was prohibited from taking title to the subsurface estate of those lands,” the CRS notes, but the Chandalar agreement later “gave ASRC title to the subsurface estate beneath those KIC surface lands, even though the KIC lands all fall in a refuge area created before
ANCSA.
“The 1983 Agreement prohibited development of the ASRC lands in ANWR unless Congress opened ANWR, as Congress did in December 2017 in P.L. 115-97. The opening of ANWR for energy development could affect not only subsurface but also surface Native lands, to the extent that they may be available for storage, staging, and other development activities.”
ANWR exploration and development could provide a big economic boom for Kaktovik, population 240, and the Arctic Slope corporation, but it was destined to leave other Alaska Native corporations out in the cold because of another stipulation in the Chandalar agreement.
It exempted the Kakotvik subsurface lands from the revenue-sharing provisions in ANCSA Section 7(i). Section 7(i) provides “for the distribution by the regional corporations of 70 percent of their mineral revenues among all 12 land-owning regional corporations,” James D. Linxwiler notes in a history of the act.
The Chandalar agreement didn’t matter when ANWR was locked up under the Obama administration. But stirrings of discord among the Native corporations began to emerge last year when it looked like ANWR might finally be opened to oil exploration.
“Some Alaska Native corporations are arguing they deserve to share the wealth,” Alex DeMarban reported at the Anchorage Daily News in March. He said the newspaper had received copies of ASRC letters to other corporations demanding they stop “asking Congress to require ASRC to share.”
“We also indicated our unhappiness at attempts by a few to re-open a long-resolved issue and attempt to undermine a settlement agreement from years ago,” ASRC spokesman Ty Hardt told DeMarban.
The disagreement among the corporations would now appear to have been solved by their taking a share of what was to be the state’s ANWR revenue.
Categories: News
Unclear. Are you saying that 3% = the lost billion? Does it’s distribution to native corporations really make up for the 70% of ASRC’s anticipated ANWR bounty? Wouldn’t ASRC also get a share of the 3%? You seem to be saying that ASRC wants to become even wealthier in relation to the other corporations than it already is? That I can believe.
“The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.” J. Paul Getty
I went to a Federal Subsistence Board mtg., in the early ‘90s, which was open to the public. I arrived a little late, and as I walked down the aisle to find a seat, someone said to me: “you’re in injun country now”. I kept walking, found a seat, and listened to the power of the Federal Gov., and the BIA, at work.
Now, granted my heritage is Norwegian/English = 2nd generation American. I am, truth be told a Caucasian, going bald on my mother’s side. So, no one would ever mistake me for an Alaskan native. I also have no prejudices.
What the Russians did to the people of Alaska, along with what my ancestors, did in the lower 48, is already historical data.
The Alaskan natives have the right to a % of this resource and more power to them. Let it go.
So you’re saying that revenues from resource development ought to be divided up on a racial basis because of something the Russians did 150 years ago? Really? I can’t think of anything more poisonous to do to the body politic in this state.
Either we are all equal under the law or we aren’t. While I would rather operate under the former, I can most certainly operate under the latter, though the results won’t be pretty. Still wondering why a group of Alaskans tapping into and channeling their inner David Duke is a something to be tolerated, celebrated or thought to be a Good Thing. We spent a lot of years trying to get rid of that crap. Why invite it back? Cheers –
ANCSA isn’t a racial issue, and isn’t about Russians. Google is a powerful tool, research the motivators behind the Act. I wouldn’t rely on comments as Gospel.
Well said, Brad. ANCSA was a land deal to settle a case of adverse possession. Everyone involved tried like hell to make it NOT a racial issue.
The Boldt Decision was racial and it appears this 3% going to Native Corporations seems to be a bit racial, too.
Where is my thinking wrong, here?
I remember the Boldt Decision, relative to Washington State’s Fisheries, and there were a lot of hard feelings then. “Let it go,” is probably a good way to handle it.
so Unless mineral rights are filed for I thought only surface rights are owned when land is under private ownership? Doesn’t Alaska law say something about equality? How can certain native Corp be held above standard public? Each native will already benefit . So native corp. benefiting would give certain people more benifit over others ? What are all the pertaining laws I guess is the question. Hopefully they are being applied.
You need to read about ANCSA law, not Alaska law.Two separate things. Subsurface rights went to the regional corps., not village corps. Though ANCSA certainly involved the state, it was a federal gig to get the pipeline built and settle Alaska’s Native American claims that had been ignored. A two-fer, so to speak. IMO, the typical white man jam-job to get ANA’s all corporate like.