Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I was in Utqiagvik, AK, also known as Barrow, AK. It is the northernmost community in the United States. I was there for what some describe as a Messenger Feast. The Inupiat word is ``Kivgiq.'' And it really was a reunion, a glorious family reunion, where the communities of the North Slope region, all eight communities and actually neighbors from Canada, gather together during the winter to celebrate family, to celebrate community. It is an extraordinary sharing.

It is very similar to the sharing that they have during the summer months, when the communities come together to celebrate the whale harvest, the Nalukataq, yet another extraordinary family-type reunion but one of a sharing in a region that is built on a culture of sharing--sharing of subsistence foods, sharing of resources--and that is what I want to focus my comments on today, the resources within the North Slope region.

As I was preparing to leave Utqiagvik on Sunday morning to go back to Anchorage, I was at the hotel and visiting with people who were gathered there for coffee. And as one gentleman was leaving, he said: Lisa, I think there are just two things that we need you to do. We need you to make sure that you protect our whale quotas so we can continue to provide for the sustenance of the people in this region, and we need for you to ensure that Willow is opened up for oil production so that we can continue our lifestyle.

Some might suggest that there is some inconsistency between this culture of a traditional subsistence lifestyle and the harvest of a whale to feed entire communities and the production of oil in the Arctic region. And I would suggest that it is not only absolutely not inconsistent but absolutely compatible because it is with the sharing of these resources that the people of the North are able to have much of what we enjoy in other parts of America today: the opportunity to see our kids educated, the opportunity for healthcare, the opportunity to be safe in our communities, the opportunity to have economies.

So I am here today to speak in strongest possible terms of the Willow Master Development Project within the National Petroleum Reserve- Alaska. We just refer to it as the NPR-A. And what I hope to do, along with my colleague Senator Sullivan, is to further educate Members of the Senate and really people around the country about this project by explaining how it will help to benefit the nearly 11,000 Alaskan Native people and residents who call the North Slope home, how it will support good-paying union jobs, how it will reduce our energy imports from, quite honestly, some of the worst regimes in the world, and why its approval is both necessary and prudent.

And I want to start with a little bit of background just to put Willow in context. Our NPR-A is a Federal petroleum reserve. It is a Federal petroleum reserve. Its lands were explicitly designated back in 1923--so 100 years ago--designated under the Harding administration. It is an area that encompasses 23.4 million acres. It is roughly the size of Indiana up in the northwest corner of Alaska.

It is home to the Alaska Native communities of Wainwright, Utqiagvik, Atqasuk, and Nuiqsut. These people from these communities have been living in this region since time immemorial. They still practice a traditional lifestyle, but they live in this region, and they care what happens in their region.

I mention that the NPR-A is 100 years old this year. Yet it has only seen a few projects, and those have been in the very recent years. And, in part, ironically, that is because the Obama-Biden administration pushed for the oil companies to turn their focus there. They explicitly encouraged--they said: Go develop in the NPR-A--explicitly designated for oil and resource development. They said: Don't go in the offshore, don't go in the nonwilderness part of ANWR. Go over to NPR-A.

That is exactly what ConocoPhillips decided to do. The company first acquired its leases for the Willow Project back in 1999. This was during the Clinton administration. They started developing them shortly thereafter, but they really accelerated that work during the Obama- Biden administration and then moved into Federal permitting in 2018. So they have been seeking Federal approval for 5 years now.

Then, last Monday, the Department of the Interior published its final supplemental environmental impact statement, the SEIS, for the Willow Project in order to address two issues that had been identified by the Federal court. So now where we are is, roughly, 30 days from now, in this time period, the Department of the Interior will be able to issue a final Record of Decision announcing its decision on whether and how this critical project should be allowed to proceed.

So you have got this final SEIS. This is a document that has been worked with career BLM officials. These are scientists. These are engineers. They have decades of experience evaluating environmental impacts of proposed projects. And they, together, with all of this analysis over this 5-year project, selected a new preferred alternative for the Willow Project. They call it Alternative E.

But keep in mind that these scientists, these engineers, these career Agency officials took years of analysis and very rigorous review. They had significant--significant--input and support--support--from the Alaska Native communities within the NPR-A and the North Slope Borough. So in other words, the people who live up there, the people whose home region it is, gave that input. There was back-and-forth. There was give-and-take. They listened to the Native people, and they worked to develop this Alternative E. Now, keep in mind, the Willow Project was already quite small when it was first advanced, in line with all modern development on the North Slope. But what BLM's preferred alternative-- what Alternative E does is it reduces its footprint even further. So from what ConocoPhillips originally wanted to do to now this Alternative E is they have gone from five drill pads to now three, with a fourth deferred to later permitting. The project will have 19 percent fewer road miles, cover 11 percent fewer acres, avoid further--avoid ecologically important areas. These were all considerations that were taken into place and placed into this Alternative E.

So at this point, the total project will cover just over 400 acres. So I have already shared with you the size of the NPR-A. What we are talking about here with the Willow Project is that .002 percent of the NPR-A will be impacted. It will be in full compliance with all of the restrictions that are included in the land management plan that the Obama-Biden administration issued back in 2013. So under that plan, they effectively took 50 percent--50 percent--of the NPR-A's surface area, some 11.8 million acres, they took that off the table to resource development. That is already off. We are not talking about that. We are talking about the area that is available now for development. The Willow Project is just .002 percent of the NPR-A.

The Willow Project itself is not going to cover all of its leased land, not by a long shot. There are areas that will have no development--no development will take place. There will be areas where development is only allowed with a waiver that would be required and areas where additional considerations will apply before any development takes place.

So, again, think about this. You have got 11.8 million acres of the NPR-A that has been taken off the table. This project is 429 acres. What we are trying to develop here, the project we are talking about developing, is literally 27,500 times smaller than what has already been taken off the table. I impress this upon folks because I think it is important to recognize that this is an extraordinarily significant project for the State of Alaska--for the resources that it will bring to my State, the economic development that it will spur. It is significant to the people of the North Slope Borough who call this region home and who rely on the revenue and the resources.

But as significant as it is, the footprint for Willow is miniscule. It has been meticulously planned to coexist with the wildlife, with the tundra, with the subsistence lifestyle on the North Slope.

Think about it. You would not have the two whaling captains who were wandering the halls here just this week--two whaling captains from the North Slope who are advocating for development of Willow if they felt that this was going to be harmful to their subsistence activity or to the subsistence caribou hunter who was also being interviewed by reporters and meeting Members of the Senate here just Tuesday to talk about why he believes that this coexistence with development, as proposed in the Willow Project, can proceed and is compatible with their life and their lifestyle.

ConocoPhillips, in moving forward with this, will have to abide by hundreds of lease stipulations and best practices. And best practices, keep in mind, when you are exploring and developing in the State of Alaska in the North Slope, it is not like Louisiana; it is not like New Mexico. They are operating in an Arctic environment, which means you have to work within the contours of the area around you. So best practices mean that exploration is effectively limited to about 90 days--90 days out of 365. You have got a lot more time that you can be building. We have to use ice ropes to help facilitate the exploration rigs that might go out. You cannot be on the tundra when the tundra is not sufficiently frozen, but then that also means that you have got to get off the tundra as soon as the spring comes.

So these conditions, this scenario, is so different than anywhere else that we produce in the United States of America. Even with these lease stipulations, even with all that has to go on, Conoco believes that they can make this extraordinary environmental commitment. They believe that this project, this Alternative E, is viable for them to proceed.

You know, if you are following the news about Willow, you would probably get the sense that the support from most Alaskans is not there because there are a few voices whom we see in objection. I get that, but I will tell you that one of the reasons--probably the biggest reason--that has helped the Willow project garner support throughout the State is that the people of the North Slope who live there have come forward and have said: We believe that this will be helpful to us.

It is not just those who are living on the North Slope. The broader Alaska Federation of Natives has come together in support; bipartisan, nonpartisan entities from around the State. One of the leaders in the region, the North Slope Borough mayor--and I had dinner with him and his wife on Saturday night. Mayor Brower is not only the mayor--a pretty extraordinary man--but he is also a whaling captain himself and is strongly, strongly in support of the Willow project.

In a letter to Secretary Haaland, he wrote:

Responsible oil and gas development is essential to the economic survival of the Borough and its residents. Oil and gas activities are the primary economic generator for our region, and . . . by far the most significant source of funding for the Borough's community services and infrastructure.

To put that into context, when he says ``significant source of funding,'' over 95 percent of the Borough's revenues come from oil in the region.

So when we think about our communities and our counties and where they may gain sources of revenue, it is pretty, pretty extraordinary to find any area where 95 percent of your revenues come from one single source.

And what do these revenues provide? They enable the Borough to provide for basic, basic services and basic infrastructure like clean drinking water, like education, like healthcare, like emergency services. The Borough does it all. The Borough is funding their own government, their own government to include search and rescue. I just mentioned emergency services.

I mentioned that the NPR-A is the size of Indiana but that the North Slope Borough is pretty significant in its size and scope, with eight communities spread out over hundreds and hundreds of miles--no roads. In the wintertime, the way that you move around is by snow machine, and in the summer, it might be by boat. But the reality is that the weather is very, very harsh, and snow machiners get lost. As people are trying to travel from one village to the next, who is there on a search and rescue? It is the local community, funded by the North Slope Borough. These are activities that, I think, most don't think that a borough would be providing, but they are able to do so--they are able to care for their people--because of the revenues that they receive from oil.

As one former mayor put it: Oil and gas activities are responsible for 200 years of development on the North Slope in the span of 30 years.

I was on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee when he made that statement on the record.

It is extraordinary how the quality of life has advanced since the days of revenue coming from our oil, and a recent study really kind of brings it home. It is not just about infrastructure that brings clean water or heat to your home, but it is what happens to one's health and well-being. When you have improved infrastructure, when you have sanitation systems, when you have medical care that these revenues have helped to facilitate, people are healthier, and people live longer.

There is an increased life expectancy among Alaska Natives who live on the North Slope. Get this: If you were born in 1985, your life expectancy is about aged 65--pretty young. For those born in 2014, the average life expectancy is 77 years. Think about that. Think about the dramatic leap in life expectancy. The only thing that has changed-- because they still live a subsistence lifestyle; they are still living in a really harsh environment. The only thing that has changed is that they have access to resources that allow them to be better cared for, that allow them to have a quality of life that we would just accept as basic. I think clean running water is basic. I think a flushed toilet is basic. I can't tell you how many communities in my State I go to where they are waiting for the day--waiting for the day--that they will get running water and a flushed toilet--pretty basic.

I think this is important. I have been talking a lot about the benefits to the people of the North Slope region, but when I mentioned that the Kivgiq and the Nalukataq are celebrations of sharing--the sharing of gifts at Kivgiq, the sharing of the whale at Nalukataq--it is not just the subsistence lifestyle that our Native people share. It is in the structure of how ANCSA really came to be such an amazing benefit to the Alaska Native people. ANCSA is the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. There is a provision within ANCSA, section 7(i) that requires--and this was agreed to by the 12 regional Native corporations--that 70 percent of all revenues received by each regional corporation from timber and subsurface estates be divided annually according to the number of Natives who are enrolled in that region.

What I am sharing with you is that, of the resource wealth that comes from the North Slope, the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation is not the only Native corporation and beneficiaries to that. All Native shareholders throughout the State, through the 12 regional corporations, are entitled to that sharing of those benefits.

Think about what that means. If you are from a region where you don't have the resources, think about what that means to then have sharing coming to you from the north. When adjusted for inflation, between 1982 and 2015, a total of $3.1 billion was shared between the regional corporations for the benefit of their shareholders, and 56 percent of that, or $1.794 billion, came from oil and gas operations.

So when people ask what is the benefit that you receive from the oil sector in Alaska, it is certainly jobs. Absolutely. It certainly benefits our State, absolutely, in terms of our revenue, and you have all heard of our permanent fund dividend. But the immediate benefit-- the real, tangible benefit--that is shared with the Alaska Native people is an extraordinary model. I think those of us here in the lower 48 think that corporations are all sharp elbows, you know, wanting to get as much as they possibly can for themselves. That is not who the Alaska Native people are. The value that they bring is truly one of sharing.

The North Slope is an amazing place, whether it is summer or whether it is the heart of winter, as it was just this weekend at 30 below. I know the Sun was up for a brief moment in time there for a period of time. Everyone is very excited that the Sun is coming back. You know, it is dark, and it is cold. But for those who would suggest that responsible resource development and a subsistence way of life are incompatible, I invite you to go up to Utqiagvik. Go to these communities and hear for yourselves and see for yourselves how it is just simply wrong, because you will be able to see the benefits of responsible resource extraction and what it can mean to the lives of people in their communities.

I was in Utqiagvik again this past weekend, but I was there in the first week of January for a memorial service for a friend of mine and a great, great Native leader, Oliver Leavitt. Oliver was not only the head of ASRC. As an extraordinary corporate leader, he helped, really, with the formation of the North Slope Borough, and he was a whaling captain. He spent a lot of time here in Washington, DC, trying to educate people.

He would always get grumpy with me when I would say: Oliver, I am so happy you are back.

He would say: I should be at hunting camp. The caribou are coming through.

You know, he was a man who lived in two worlds, but you listened. I listened. I share this. I went to the school of Oliver Leavitt, and I heard his stories about how hard it was for him as a young boy and as a young man. His job was to go out before school and collect driftwood so that their family home could have some form of fuel.

Keep in mind that there are no trees on the North Slope. It is hard. It is hard.

He said: I went to school not because I wanted to learn but because there was heat in the school.

He saw a transformation of what it meant for the people when they were finally able to get natural gas into his community and how, now, an elder can turn on the heat by just turning on the thermostat. What a concept. Well, for us, we kind of expect that, but it is just a reminder, again, of the benefits that come to those who live there and who have lived there for generations and thousands of years--of how they are compatible with Alaska's future here.

The Willow project will allow development, health outcomes, and life expectancy all to improve--all to improve--on the North Slope.

You think about the resources that the people need and what will happen if they no longer have access to those resources. What will happen? They are telling me, Lisa, we can't go back in time. We don't want to be left out in the cold. We will not be left out in the cold.

This is not social justice. So I ask us, as we are looking at this particular project, to keep in mind and keep in your hearts the people for whom it will most benefit.

But don't forget, the rest of Alaska and the country as a whole--they are also going to benefit. It is projected to create an estimated 2,500 construction jobs. Seventy-five percent of them will be filled by union labor, so unions are pretty supportive of this. Once complete, it will support 300 permanent jobs, which then in turn spins off thousands more across the State and across the country.

I mentioned the unions. If you support unions, you should be supporting Willow. The Alaska AFL-CIO, the Alaska District Council of Laborers, the North America's Building Trades Union, the Labors' International Union of North America, the International Union of Operating Engineers, the United Association--plumbers and pipefitters-- they are all on board. They are all on board and strongly supportive. So are countless others who recognize the importance of creating good jobs in Alaska and around the country to help reverse our GDP decline.

We are in a tough place in Alaska right now. I think we are No. 47, if I am not mistaken, out of 50 States. We are seeing a net migration out of Alaska. That is greatly concerning--greatly concerning. We have a higher than average unemployment rate. So we are looking at this and saying that Alaska needs this project.

I know there is criticism out there. You have folks who are saying: Nope, can't move Willow forward. We all have to address climate. We have to address the issue of climate change.

Let's talk about that for just a second because you know, Mr. President--you have heard me talk about it. You have heard me stand up and say that we need to be actively working to reduce emissions and increase our use of clean energy. I have been pushing policies to do just that. But I think we also recognize that you just can't flip a switch. You just can't get there from here overnight. There is a transition.

So I think what we need to focus on, the true choice that we have to face, is how painful, how chaotic do we want the transition to be for the people whom we serve?

On Tuesday night, when the President spoke at the State of the Union, he acknowledged it. He said we are going to need oil for at least another decade and beyond that. I would argue it is going to be longer than a decade, regardless of what we do at the policy level.

So the question is, What are we going to do to take care of our own needs with our own resources or are we going to empower OPEC at our own expense, and are we willingly going to return to the days of being highly dependent on foreign oil, with all of the economic, all of the environmental, all of the geostrategic consequences that entails?

We have seen what happens when we make poor choices and we don't plan for what a rational energy transition is going to look like. Europe is certainly one example there. But I would suggest--let's bring it a little closer to home. California is another example. Alaska's oil production has declined. We send a lot of our stuff to California. As our oil production has declined, what is happening in California is that their imports have risen and they have risen dramatically. They have turned where? They have turned to countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia for their supply. So now that the Russian supply is outlawed, we saw a recent New York Times article that noted that ``one in every nine tanks of gas, diesel, or jet fuel pumped in California comes from the Amazon.'' So, really, are we OK with this? Are we really OK with this? I don't think California is going to be happy knowing their gas came from Russia. But now that we are not taking it from Russia, now it is going to come from the Amazon rather than from a petroleum reserve in Alaska.

The choice here is not whether we need to continue to develop our oil resources--we do; we clearly do--the choice is where the source is going to come from. We are going to need it for decades to come. I will tell you, I am going to choose Alaska anytime over foreign sources. I will choose Alaska because we have a better environmental track record, because development there benefits our people there, and it ultimately makes it a little easier to address climate.

So you can oppose production on the North Slope. You can impoverish Alaska Natives and blame them for changes in the climate that they did not cause. But can you really feel good about that given the autocrats you are going to empower around the world and the harm and the devastation that come?

We have a better answer, and the better answer here is Willow. It is going to provide up to 180,000 barrels per day at peak production. This is going to help us refill our Trans-Alaska Pipeline. It is going to keep the lower 48 from having to import from some of the worst regimes in the world. So instead of importing from places with no environmental standards to speak of, we should be confident that the energy we need is coming from a project with a tiny footprint that is safely operated with as little impact as humanly possible. And we can ensure that the benefits of production go to the Alaska Natives of the North Slope and the communities around the State and around the country rather than petrocrats like Vladimir Putin.

All we need--all we need--is the approval of the Willow project, which will allow us to continue to tackle climate change while maintaining our energy security. It is not going to be a violation of the President's pledges, which were--I will remind you, they were to allow responsible development on existing leases to occur. Well, Willow--valid existing leases--was approved when he came into office. Its reapproval next month would simply signal to Alaska Natives, to Alaskans, to Americans, and the world that we are serious not only about our climate policies but also our energy policies.

I urge the Biden administration in the strongest possible terms to listen to all who support this important project, and I urge them to reject the false and misguided claims about impacts coming from some. I would urge them to issue a Record of Decision early next month selecting Alternative E without new limits or extraneous conditions. We need to get to work.

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