Listen to real Alaskans for a change.
Wall Street Journal (9/27/22) op-ed: "The long-delayed Willow oilfield project, which is located within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), is vital for Alaska’s economy, for America’s energy security, and for further modernizing the North Slope region. Some of our residents still live in homes that aren’t connected to running water and basic sewage systems. We have no roads connecting our communities because the federal government won’t allow us to build them. According to Bureau of Land Management estimates, Willow could generate between $8 billion and $17 billion in new revenue for the federal government, the state of Alaska and communities such as Utqiaġvik. Willow is located on the ancestral lands of the Iñupiat people but isn’t an Iñupiat project. That’s because the federal government claimed the National Petroleum Reserve for itself before the Alaska’s native people had an opportunity to settle our land claims. Eben Hopson, the first mayor of Utqiaġvik and founder of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, worked with other Iñupiat leaders to create the North Slope Borough in 1972. As a home-rule municipality, the borough gives our people the ability to tax oil and gas infrastructure and benefit from resource development on our ancestral lands. More than 95% of the North Slope Borough’s tax revenue and a third of Alaska’s private-sector jobs come from the oil-and-gas industry. The fossil-fuel extraction industry has for 50 years enabled us to provide basic services to the eight Iñupiat villages on the North Slope. This money supports essential services in all our villages, including health clinics, schools, Alaska’s only tribal college, water and sewer infrastructure, fire and search-and-rescue services, and our own department of wildlife management. The borough is a unique example of Native Americans using the municipal-government model to support themselves. We are able to do this because we have a tax base. We have a tax base because of the fossil-fuel industry."
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