January-Issue-3 2012

The Alaska Railroad Corp. brings aboard a new vice president for business development. Dale Wade explained the role he’s taking on and how it relates to the country’s last rail line to handle both freight and passengers.

A dormant North Slope project has been reborn as a way to support oil and exploration companies faced with the area’s currently scant facilities. The Deadhorse Aviation Center is designed to be the area’s largest and most modern piece of infrastructure, and is expected to open this summer.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Appeals Board approval of Shell Oil’s air quality permit for its Noble Discoverer drillship Jan. 12 is a major step forward for the company, Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said.

Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. is “recirculating” crude oil at four pump stations on the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline to warm the crude as bitter winter weather continues in Interior Alaska, an Alyeska spokeswoman said Jan. 17.

North Slope producers have started planning work on a large liquefied natural gas project that would serve Asia markets, but large and unresolved issues among the producers and with the state of Alaska still need to be settled, sources in the companies say.

North Slope producers have started planning work on a large liquefied natural gas project that would serve Asia markets, but large and unresolved issues among the producers and with the state of Alaska still need to be settled, sources in the companies say.

State legislators gaveled back into session Jan. 17 and like deer in the headlights, they can see our fiscal future coming.

JUNEAU (AP) — Proponents of an initiative to revive Alaska’s coastal management program said Jan. 17 that they have collected nearly 34,000 signatures.

Risk on. Risk off. That pretty much sums up the volatile year we had in 2011. It was a year dominated by the European sovereign debt crisis (which has been festering since early 2010) and worries about a double dip recession in the U.S. (and the loss of our AAA rating). Despite the downgrade by S&P to AA, U.S. Treasury bonds were one of the best performing assets in 2011 as investors sought a safe haven amidst equity volatility. The range in yield of the 10year Treasury was from a high of 3.7 percent in February to 1.7 percent in September. The 10year Treasuries ended the year at a record low yielding 1.9 percent, while gaining 17.1 percent in total return.

It’s better late than never to do right by Alaska’s Native veterans.

Most people don’t know that 40 years ago Alaska pioneered the use of sonar to track salmon runs, or that state fishery managers operate 15 sonar sites on 13 rivers from Southeast to the Yukon.

Pacific halibut is in the headlines as commercial and recreational harvesters go head-to-head over management of the resource. Decisions are on the table that few Gulf of Alaska fishers, both in the directed and non-directed fisheries, perceive as fair.

Steve Forbes, president and CEO of Forbes Inc., will be the keynote speaker at a sold-out 2012 Economic Forecast Luncheon hosted by the Anchorage Economic Development Corp. Jan. 25. Forbes, a Republican candidate for president in 1996 and 2000 who has long advocated a flat tax system, talked with the Journal about domestic energy policy, the race for the GOP nomination, the ‘Occupy’ movement and growing calls for tax reform.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The more astronomers look for other worlds, the more they find that it’s a crowded and crazy cosmos. They think planets easily outnumber stars in our galaxy and they’re even finding them in the strangest of places.

Ruling won't lift fishing closures, however.

After two lean years of Alaska Bering Sea pollock harvests, 2011 was supposed to be a return to normalcy with a quota set near the historic average at 1.25 million metric tons.

Alaska anglers have gotten a crash course in halibut management over the past six months and now they have an opportunity to see it in action firsthand.

Obama proposes moving NOAA to Interior Dept.; Alaska salmon processors drop MSC support; a new study blames killer whales for failure of Steller sea lions to recover