Alaska
Forty-ninth state of the United States, known for the TransAlaska Pipeline.
“Seward’s Folly” no longer has a place—if it ever did—in
the lexicon as a nickname for Alaska, given the actual and
potential reserves of Alaskan oil and gas, not to mention the
abundance of coal. The oil field at Prudhoe Bay, discovered
by Atlantic Richfield in 1968, has the potential productive
capacity of 10 billion barrels—twice as much as the nextlargest field ever found in the United States, that of East Texas
in 1930. As of 2000, the oil output of Alaska equaled 20 percent of the nation’s yield.
During the global oil boom between 1973 and 1985,
Alaska gloried in its oil revenues—so much so, in fact, that its
legislature abolished the state’s income tax in 1979, when oil
prices neared their peak.
At the same time came the wrangling between oil companies and environmentalists over the proposal to build a
pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope 789 miles to the port of
Valdez. In support of this objective, a consortium of oil companies formed, known first as the Trans-Alaska Pipeline
System and then as the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company.
The companies in the consortium saw the proposed pipeline
as the most desirable way of solving a major problem—transporting the oil from Prudhoe Bay to distant markets.
Environmental activists protested the plan. They forced
the national government to implement the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which called for an impact
statement to precede the issuance of permits. A federal district court upheld this initiative by environmentalists when it
forbade the secretary of the interior to issue the necessary
permits.
The legal battle continued from August 1972 through
April 1973, and in April 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld
a court of appeals decision, which delayed further the
issuance of permits. At the insistence of environmentalists,
the court of appeals had applied a provision of the Mineral
Leasing Act of 1920, which limited rights-of-way across public lands to widths of 50 feet. The oil companies wanted
widths up to three times that distance.
Congress then intervened. After a period of protracted
debate, a bill finally cleared the Senate, then the House.
Signed by President Richard Nixon in November 1973 under
the title Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, it permitted construction—the result being the completion of the
Trans-Alaska Pipeline by 1977, which constituted an economic boon.
For the future, Alaska looks to further development of its
petroleum resources, the mining of metals, tourism, and
overseas trade with Asia as bases for prosperity. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the administration of
President G. W. Bush stepped up efforts to gain support for
its proposal to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National
Wildlife Reserve, but the Senate rejected the measure April
18, 2003. New initiatives have been proposed to drill on
Native American lands, but their future remains uncertain.