What is wrong with the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission? Nearly a month ago, three legislators, all lawyers, asked the agency a simple question. The agency has to date offered no response.
Sens. Matt Claman and Bill Wielechowski and Rep. Andy Josephson asked AOGCC to identify the statutes that support the odd position it has staked out on the extent of its own jurisdiction. The controversy is easy to understand: Are the agency’s powers statewide, as the law states, or something considerably less, as the agency insists?
AOGCC’s unwillingness to answer the question posed by the legislators is significant for three reasons. First, it has already lost this battle in court. Second, its position amounts to an enormous giveaway of state power straight to the oil industry. Third, an oversight agency operating without a basis in law is shortchanging the public, whom it is supposed to be serving. This all makes the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission as a whole look weak, and its commissioners foolish. One can only hope that the agency will change course.
— Hollis S. French
Former AOGCC Commissioner, 2016-19
Anchorage
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