West Susitna Access?
Contributed by Kevin McCabe
For me, it's about revenue. If we had more funds in our dwindling pot of money, currently sustained largely by oil revenue and interest income from the Permanent Fund, we could hire more people and more easily finance essential DOT projects like rebuilding Big Lake Road. More revenue would mean better funding for schools, retirement benefits, and not just the new projects Alaskans want but also the critical infrastructure repairs we desperately need.
How do we get revenue?
Many of us believe that the path to increased revenue begins with developing our abundant resources, as mandated by the Alaska Constitution. This development includes mining and the construction of roads to access those resources—roads that mining companies could then be tolled to use.
Without roads and transportation, resource development is impossible. The reality is that we’re currently earning almost no revenue from the resources targeted by the mines at the top of the West Susitna Access, which are owned or leased by international mining interests. The "anti-everything" crowd seems to overlook the fact that these foreign interests have U.S. subsidiaries employing Americans and Alaskans, paying U.S. taxes, leasing or purchasing property in the U.S., and paying Alaska royalties and lease fees. These companies operate just like thousands of other global companies in the U.S. and Alaska. Ultimately, the true "interests"—the resources—belong to Alaskans, no matter who we hire to extract them. Does it really matter where these companies choose to be headquartered?
Consider this: We’ve used British Petroleum on the Slope, along with other international or out-of-state companies, subsidiaries, or those with foreign corporate headquarters. Royal Caribbean, for instance, is involved in financing and monetizing the new Seward Dock—where’s the outrage over that? Enstar is a Canadian company; are those opposed to West Susitna Access because of foreign mining interests willing to shut off their gas in protest? These foreign interests are simply companies we hire to extract our resources. Even some of the lodge and tourist businesses in West Su, which oppose the West Susitna Access, rely on foreign clientele for their livelihood. Should we protest them too? And how much revenue does Alaska’s general fund gain from allowing foreign fishermen, hunters, skiers, and hikers to come into our state, use our resources, and then leave?
At the end of the day, the road, the beauty of West Su, the fish, the timber, the mines, the coal, the gas—all of these are Alaska’s resources. Alaskans own these resources by constitutional right, and the legislature is required by that same constitution to develop them for maximum sustainability. If a foreign company wants to develop the mines—perhaps because they’re the only ones capable—should we say no? "No, Mr. Mining Company, because you’re foreign, you cannot come in here, help extract our oil, gas, coal, or gold, and pay us for it, nor pay us to use the road we built to get those resources to market."
The legislature is acting solely for the benefit of Alaskans who live here. We own the resources, but right now, in the ground, they are worth exactly zero. The only way to monetize any resource, unless we do it ourselves, is to find companies with the expertise and willingness to lease the land, pay AMHT or DNR for the leases, develop the mines, and pay us for our resources as they extract them and use the road we built.
Why would Alaska build any Access Roads?
More often than not, those companies we hire to extract our resources cannot, or will not, build roads to the standard we want them built. Building roads to Alaska DOT standards are not necessarily their core competency, nor do they want to spend the time doing that chore. So, we should build the roads, with a contractor whose specialty is building roads to our standards, with our supervision. Then we charge a toll for commercial vehicles using that road to pay for it. It really is that simple.
The bottom line is this: where a company is based, or who owns it, isn’t what matters. If they’re willing to pay us royalties for our resources and pay us to use our road, a road we build, then does it really matter where their company HQ is?