State still reviewing Pebble permit The state Department of Natural Resource is still reviewing Pebble Partnership’s application for a new Miscellaneous Land Use Permit to do work on state lands at the big Pebble minerals deposit near Iliamna. The current MLUP expires at the end of this month and PPL needs a new one to cover site activities including a summer program of eld work that is planned. DNR will ask the company to provide a bond, also. The U.S….
Prince William Sound crabfishing Prince Williams Sound is seeing the start of a winter tanner crab fishery, its first in decades. Cordova sheries groups have pushed for the crab fishery for several years as a way to expand current harvesting, which is mostly seasonal. State fish and game biologists held off approving the fishery over concerns for the biological stock. Meanwhile, winter snow crab fishery in the Bering Sea is winding down. That got underway in mid-January. *** Sitka prepares…
2nd growth sale on Gravina Island The U.S. Forest Service is moving ahead with a planned sale of 4.6 million board feet of second-growth timber on Gravina Island near Ketchikan. The harvest area encompasses 155 acres and will require 1.2 miles of new road access. The USFS completed an Environmental Assessment for the sale with a finding of no significant impact.
North Slope oil production is dropping North Slope oil production is running lower this year, according to state production data. For the state scal year-to-date through February daily production is down 1,876 barrels a day. When part of March is included and extrapolated to the end of the month, the decline increases to 2,535 barrels daily. The year-to-day average production average is 518,352 barrels/day. Legislators are building the state’s budget around a 526,000 b/d estimate made late last year. Production…
Farmers do better with Mat-Su meat plant in private hands Privatization of the former state-owned Mt. McKinley Meat and Sausage slaughterhouse in Palmer last year is proving successful and is leading to rapid growth in the state’s small barley-growing and cattle ranching industries. Barley farmers in the Delta area planted 5,500 acres and harvested 239,000 bushels last year, the best production in a decade, according to newly-released U.S. Dept. of Agriculture statistics. The number of beef cattle being raised also…
Interior plans accelerated reviews for ANWR leasing The U.S. Interior Department will kick off its environmental review of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge leasing using the department’s new policy of completing an EIS within one year and limiting it to 300 pages. In the past EIS documents have exceeded 1,000 pages and have taken several years. If the EIS is expedited, however, it may provide openings for inevitable lawsuits led by U.S. environmental groups. One group, The Wilderness Society, already sees…
Healy 2 coal plant to start up Golden Valley Electric Association of Fairbanks will begin test- ring the 50 Megawatt Healy 2 coal plant at Healy in June and hope to have it fully operational in September, officials told a legislative committee in Juneau March 6. Healy 2 has had a lengthy retro t after being built originally by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority in the late 1980s to test new clean-coal technology. GVEA subsequently purchased the plant….
The job-loss numbers shrink each month. In January, employment was down an estimated 0.5 percent. December was 1 percent; November was 0.9 percent; October was 1.3 percent. If the trend continues things will level out this spring and perhaps start growing again, but it will be slow. All the major occupations, oil and gas, construction, professional and business services, retail, etc. continue to decline but at much slower rates. Health care is the exception, with strong growth. In January it…
China LNG deal for real? Independent expert says yes, maybe A China expert has been retained by the Legislative Affairs Council to give legislators an independent assessment of the hoped-for Chinese investment and purchasing deal being negotiated for Alaska lique ed natural gas. In presentations so far to state legislators Dr. Wenran Jiang of the University of Alberta, basically validates the potential for the pending deal and what Gov. Bill Walker and officials at Alaska Gasline Development Corp. have been…