Alaska

A Senate panel plans to meet this week to mark up a proposal to open a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas development, which may require the Department of Interior (DOI) to hold at least two lease sales for the region over the next decade.

Three Chinese companies tentatively have stepped forward to help finance Alaska’s costly and long-stalled natural gas export dreams.

The Trump administration said Wednesday it plans in December to auction all available tracts within the 22.8-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) for oil and natural gas development.

A budget resolution unveiled by a Senate panel Friday calls for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, as well as its counterpart in the House, to save at least $1 billion over the next decade, leading to speculation that the Senate committee could ultimately push to open a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to energy development.

Retail electricity rates for U.S. residential customers averaged 12.8 cents/kWh during the first half of this year, or about 3% more than the same period in 2016, an increase that was driven by higher fuel costs for commodities like natural gas, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The State of Alaska has asked to intervene in a lawsuit that environmental groups filed last May against the Trump administration for possibly opening the Beaufort and Chukchi seas to offshore oil and natural gas leasing.

Shortly after Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted against a motion Tuesday to move forward with debate on healthcare legislation, the Trump administration’s Interior secretary reportedly contacted her and Alaskan Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, warning of retaliation.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) gave conditional approval for a subsidiary of Italy’s Eni SpA to drill four exploratory wells on an artificial island in the Beaufort Sea, on leases the company acquired back in 2005.

ConocoPhillips, unable to find a buyer for its Kenai natural gas export facility in Alaska, plans to shutter operations until market conditions improve.