(ANCHORAGE) –  Alaska conservative Republican Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka today laid out her vision for the oil and natural gas industries to create jobs, promote lower energy costs, and restore Alaskans’ rights. Tshibaka also pledged to defend Alaska against the extreme environmental agenda of President Joe Biden’s administration, in sharp contrast to incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who enabled Biden’s anti-Alaska policies even before the 2020 election.
 
“Alaska deserves a senator who represents Alaska to Washington, D.C., not one who represents the D.C. insiders to Alaska,” Tshibaka said. “We want to unleash our vast energy potential to create jobs and lower fuel costs, not bow down to the environmental extremists who want to turn our state into a national park for the rest of the country.”
 
Tshibaka’s energy platform will promote growth and job creation in the energy industries which drive the Alaska economy and its state budget.
 

Expedited Permitting
 
Permitting processes for oil and gas leases on public lands are onerous and time consuming, taking years to complete. In the case of access to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), federal regulatory restrictions were in place for 60 years before former President Donald Trump cleared the way for energy production. Biden then suspended oil and gas leases in ANWR on his first day in office.
 
Tshibaka is calling for permitting processes to be completed within a certain time frame.
 
“When bureaucrats don’t support something, they love to drag out the process,” Tshibaka said. “‘Go slow’ means a ‘no go.’ It costs our companies a lot of time and money, which often makes projects cost prohibitive, preventing Alaskan workers from earning money to support their families.”
 

Timely Conveyance of Public Lands
 
President Trump was in the process of transferring 28 million acres of land to Alaska before Biden took office and promptly stopped the plan. In addition, Biden’s Secretary of Interior has started the process of seizing 44 million more acres, taking more land from Alaskans and federalizing nearly 73% of the state. Tshibaka is demanding the timely and orderly conveyance to Alaska of its public lands for potential development of oil and natural gas.
 
“We are owed land by the federal government, it’s as simple as that,” Tshibaka said. “Alaskans know best how to responsibly develop our resources. No D.C. insider cares about the Alaskan environment more than the Alaskans who live and work here.”
 

Opposition to Carbon Tax
 
Tshibaka will oppose carbon taxes on energy industries because it will increase costs on hard-working Alaskans who struggle to pay their fuel bills. Tshibaka favors carbon capture and sequestration technologies which the private sector can develop and employ to better deal with pollution, rather than simply making energy more expensive for consumers.
 
“Families are already struggling to survive in this suffocating economy, and it’s getting worse thanks to Joe Biden and Lisa Murkowski,” Tshibaka said. “A carbon tax will just jack up the cost of energy for everybody and hit people hard, when we don’t have any room to be hit anymore.”
 
As recently as October 2020, Murkowski expressed openness to a carbon tax, saying it “should be one of the options that is on the table.”
 

Lisa Murkowski Enabled Radical Biden Agenda
 
President Trump’s policies were demonstrably beneficial to Alaska, but Murkowski openly opposed him, both in his first election in 2016 and in his re-election campaign in 2020. This open antagonism of a president who was good for Alaska is not the kind of leadership Alaska residents want.
 
Worse, Murkowski was the deciding vote in the Senate committee which advanced Biden’s choice for Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, who will be the point person on the radical environmental agenda continuously targeting Alaska and opposing fossil fuel development in America.
 
“A U.S. Senator’s real value is in the big moments, the critical votes, and Haaland’s nomination was one of those critical votes. Lisa Murkowski’s approval of Haaland will cost Alaska billions of dollars,” Tshibaka said. “Votes like that may make Lisa Murkowski popular with the D.C. cocktail party crowd, but they actually hurt folks back here at home. Alaskans are paying the bill for Lisa Murkowski’s bad decisions. But where’s our benefit? When I’m senator, we’ll have someone in Washington who looks out for Alaska rather than her friends in the halls of power thousands of miles away.”
 

Murkowski Failed to Deliver Offshore Revenue Sharing
 
Under the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas share revenues, which also support environmental programs through the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Alaska has never been included in such an arrangement, which would have provided much-needed incentive for offshore exploration and production in Alaska.
 
Tshibaka said an energy revenue sharing pact for Alaska, similar to the one enjoyed by Gulf of Mexico states, would have grown the state’s economy, created jobs, and protected the environment.
 
“All Alaskans ever want is fairness and the opportunity to access what is rightfully ours,” Tshibaka said. “The Gulf compact has been in place for 15 years and Lisa Murkowski has been in the Senate that entire time. Why was Alaska never brought to the table?”

 

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