newsminer.com

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as running mate bolsters his “all of the above” energy platform with a strong proponent for expanding domestic petroleum production.

Palin’s pro-energy development views fit nicely with the Republican Party’s calls to “drill, drill, drill” in response to growing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and sustained high gasoline prices that continue to rile consumers at home.

She also will bring national attention to energy development in Alaska, including progress on a North Slope natural gas pipeline and efforts to allow drilling in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“She brings an experienced voice in communicating the policies to the American people,” McCain policy director Doug Holtz-Eakin said of Palin.

How beneficial a Palin vice presidency would be for Alaska depends on whether McCain gives her the energy portfolio and how his cabinet is structured.

McCain praised Palin’s “tenacity and skill in tackling great problems, especially our dangerous dependence on foreign oil” when introducing her to the nation last week. McCain said Palin understands energy issues “better than anybody I know in Washington, D.C.”

Palin said a McCain administration would lay more pipelines, build more nuclear plants, create jobs with clean coal and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal and other alternative sources to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

The United States imports 60 percent of the 22 million barrels of oil it consumes daily, most of it from Canada. A fifth of U.S. oil imports — about 2.5 million barrels a day — come from the Middle East, while Venezuela accounts for another 10 percent and Nigeria contributes 8 percent.

“We have an over-reliance in too many places that are not our friends, so we are trying aggressively to change that by changing the energy portfolio of the United States,” Holtz-Eakin said.

Palin, 44, is expected to become the McCain campaign’s attack dog on energy issues.

The first-term governor showed her ability to go on the offensive Thursday in her address to the national Republican convention in St. Paul. Palin criticized Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for rejecting calls to open new federal areas to exploration.

“Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems — as if we all didn’t know that already,” she said. “But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.”

An adviser to Obama said the McCain campaign has gone out of its way to misrepresent Obama’s position on drilling.

“They distort our record and say we’re ‘Doctor No.’ They say we don’t support new development and that’s just not true,” said Heather Zichal, the Obama campaign’s energy policy director.

Energy companies should first concentrate on developing every last drop of oil and natural gas in the 33.5 million offshore acres already open to exploration, the Obama campaign said. Oil and gas companies hold leases on another 34 million acres of federal lands onshore that are not producing.

“The notion that everything is locked up is just not true,” Zichal said.

McCain is calling for opening all federal waters, about 574 million acres, and is offering coastal states a slice of the revenue as an inducement to allow development off their shores.

George W. Bush lifted the presidential ban on offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans earlier this summer. A separate congressional prohibition that’s been in place since 1981 is set to expire this month unless Congress extends it.

Obama backs keeping the moratorium in place, though he has voiced support for a comprehensive approach to energy policy that includes some new offshore drilling, such as legislation the bipartisan “Gang of 10” have proposed in the Senate.

“Obama doesn’t think (removing the ban) will help our problem in the short term or reduce our dependence on foreign oil in the long term,” Zichal said.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the portions of the outer continental shelf currently under moratorium could hold as much as 18 billion barrels of oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of national gas.

Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort seas are already open to leasing, though legal challenges from environmental groups have delayed exploration.

The federal government is in the early stages of planning a 5.6 million-acre lease sale in Bristol Bay for 2011, which threatens to pit the state’s top two industries — fishing and energy — against each other.

President Bush removed the ban on drilling in Bristol Bay, which had been in place since 1989, at the beginning of 2007.

Palin, whose family fishes commercially out of Dillingham, favors oil and gas exploration in the waters of Bristol Bay as long as it’s done in an environmentally sound manner and with local support.

McCain has not taken a position on Bristol Bay, also known as the North Aleutian Basin, but he has always believed local stakeholders should have a central say in any decision about development, Holtz-Eakin said.

The Obama campaign said any decision about whether to develop the area will have to be driven by science and input of local communities.

The federal waters off Alaska potentially hold 23 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the USGS.

Obama has voiced support for increasing the rate of development in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve and construction of a pipeline to send North Slope natural gas to markets in the Lower 48.

Energy analysts point out the NPR-A does not hold the same potential for large-scale discoveries as ANWR and that the lack of pipelines and other infrastructure makes the area less attractive to energy companies.

“The NPR-A has been set aside specifically for the oil and gas resources that are there, and we need to bring them online in as environmentally safe way as possible,” Zichal said. “We are going to need to make the investment to bring those resources online.”

Zichal said the question of developing ANWR is “completely off the table” for Obama.

McCain also does not agree with developing ANWR, something Palin staunchly supports.

Palin has promised to use her powers of persuasion to get McCain to drop his opposition to ANWR. It may be an uphill battle.

“I’m sure they will have conversations about it, but for the moment the senator doesn’t think we should be pursuing development in ANWR,” Holtz-Eakin said.

Asked whether Palin’s “pitbull in lipstick” tenacity might not win the day, Holtz-Eakin said of McCain: “He’s headstrong, too.”

There may be a divergence of views on certain policy issues within the campaign but publicly Palin is expected to tow the line, Holtz-Eakin said.

“The policies themselves are John McCain’s and she will support them,” he said.

Both campaigns support a gas pipeline project.

Palin has been an outspoken booster of the gas pipeline, and before being tapped for the McCain campaign, publicly praised Obama for supporting to the project.

At the end of August, Palin signed legislation authorizing the state to grant a license and $500 million in seed money to TransCanada to pursue federal approval of a 1,715-mile pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to markets in the Lower 48.

The Obama campaign considers the gas pipeline a national priority and would use its influence to ensure the major North Slope oil producers participated in the project, Zichal said.

“It’s working directly with the state of Alaska to make sure they have the resources they need and it’s bringing all of the stakeholders to the table to make sure we’re moving forward,” she said.

“I think just bringing the power of the White House to the project is going to help get this done. We’ve been talking about this for 30 years — it’s time to act.”

Asked whether Obama would support legislation restricting judicial review of the pipeline to speed construction, Zichal said an Obama administration would do its best to convince environmental groups and others who might challenge the project that it is necessary.

“He would make the case that investing in this pipeline is actually good for the environment and try to bring the environmental community onboard so we wouldn’t be mired in lawsuits,” she said.

Palin’s tough talk on oil and production runs the risk of alienating those who support a more diverse energy supply. Environmental groups have already highlighted comments Palin made about alternative energy solutions being more than 10 years away.

Palin has backed renewable energy at home, though probably not to the extent her critics would have liked.

In her first year as governor, she ordered an inventory of the state’s wind, geothermal and tidal energy potential, and in May she signed legislation to spend $100 million on renewable energy development.

Obama has pledged to spend $150 billion across 10 years to develop alternative energy sources. He also supports requiring 25 percent of the nation’s electricity be generated with renewable energy by 2025.

McCain supports federal incentives for renewable energy development but not in their current form.

Holtz-Eakin said McCain wants to level the playing field to make sure sectors of the energy industry don’t receive more federal funding than others just because they have more powerful lobbyists.

McCain and Obama have both voiced support for a cap-and-trade style approach to restricting greenhouse gas emissions, though they differ on the details.

Palin has challenged the federal government about its listing of the polar bear as threatened and has publicly questioned whether changing climate conditions in the Arctic are the result of human activity.