AIDEA launches ANWR leases with no business plan, just a political prayer

The board of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority is treating the decision to spend about $17 million this year on oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a political vision, not a business decision.

That is a serious mistake.

The AIDEA board has launched into the prospect with no business plan on the costs of ANWR oil development, just political pressure from the likes of former Govs. Frank Murkowski and Bill Walker, who think the cause is just and this is a crusade worth fighting.

The AIDEA action is akin to thinking that going to court is a good investment, as it is nowhere near an action that could lead to a development plan.

How much state money is AIDEA willing to spend from its slush fund to advance the ANWR leases? The agency operates with little to no public scrutiny and no one will say where the money is going to come from or what it will take.

How much will geophysical exploration cost? Is that something the state should pay for?

Does the agency have the ability and the resources to take on this venture? If anyone has asked that question, no one at AIDEA has answered it.

Who is going to prepare and finance a development plan to be submitted to the Biden administration, which will either reject it or stall it for the next four years?

There is a vague notion that someday a private company will conclude there is money to be made and will assume all of the risk and take over the job.

How will climate change, the refusal of banks to provide financing, the pressure to focus on renewable energy and intense nationwide and worldwide environmental opposition impact the process?

Is this a good investment? AIDEA answered that by accepting the 40-year political mythology that treats ANWR oil as the magic bullet that will save Alaska.

Perhaps an investment in the Anchorage port would be a better use of state money, one in which the returns can actually be analyzed. It’s impossible to analyze a dream.

The spokeswoman for an oil industry support group mentioned AIDEA’s involvement with the so-called Mustang project as a precedent for AIDEA operating on the North Slope.

But that should be a cautionary tale for Alaskans, not an example to follow. AIDEA has yet to update the document on its website and refuses to explain the status of the project in English.

This legislative audit released last fall does a better job of showing how the costs of North Slope investments by AIDEA, even on a small project, can quickly multiply and turn sour. AIDEA had put about $90.5 million into the Mustang project as of last March. It could lose a lot of money on this, a topic that has drawn almost no news coverage.

“AIDEA’s overall investment in the Mustang project could reduce subsequent AIDEA dividends,” the audit said.

AIDEA put $20 million into a road and production pad, followed by tens of millions more. It was high risk, high return, according to AIDEA.

Or no return, which is what happened with the oil price crash.

In October, Revenue Commissioner Lucinda Mahoney, who should be on the AIDEA board but is represented by former legislator Anna MacKinnon, wrote, "it is premature to declare the Mustang project a loss.”

She said it is not a loss because of the sale of the project to Finnex and quoted the promoters as saying the “project remains fundamentally sound.”

But two months later, that deal was dead. AIDEA needs a new buyer.

Regarding ANWR, the AIDEA board members talked about “planting seeds” for the next generation and saying it’s OK to risk money on leases and fees because the state will get half of it back from the federal government.

The AIDEA board members wouldn’t risk their own money this way, but the political reflex that ANWR represents the next big oil boom in Alaska remains powerful.

AIDEA and two small private companies were the only bidders at the ANWR lease sale. The dismal turnout will strengthen the Biden administration’s efforts to kill the leases outright, which may happen early in the administration.

The state will then go to court, perhaps relying on the $4 million elite strike force team of Outside lawyers that Gov. Mike Dunleavy hopes to assemble to fight the new administration.

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