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Murkowski, Sullivan, Young stop in Anchorage on their way to Kotzebue

By KTVA

ANCHORAGE – Alaska’s congressional delegation again presented a united front Monday in Anchorage.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Sen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young held a brief press conference Monday afternoon at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport before they caught a flight to Kotzebue.

The delegation plans to meet with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, who is also visiting Alaska. The three were “outraged” over President Obama’s efforts to designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as wilderness, along with withdrawing certain areas of the Outer Continental Shelf from leasing options. ANWR will be one of the topics discussed with Jewell, Young assures.

“It will be done,” Young said on the opening of ANWR to oil and gas exploration. “It’s just a matter of time.”

Murkowski says Obama’s recent announcements about ANWR and the OCS are a veiled effort to shut down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

“What you have here is the whole area — ANWR, OCS, NPR-A — the areas where we have extraordinary resource potential for Alaska and America being systemically choked off,” said Murkowski.

Obama says he made the decisions, in part, to protect Alaska Native subsistence hunters and to preserve the unique environment. But Murkowski says she hopes Jewell listens to the people of the region on her trip to Alaska “who want to be in their homeland but want to be able to live there with some means of economy.”

At the press conference, Murkowski started things off by outlining some of the bills that have been passed so far this session, including ones related to suicide and terrorism. The topics of climate change and the Keystone XL Pipeline soon came to the forefront of the conversation.

When asked for Alaska’s tie to the Keystone pipeline – one that Murkowski has been pushing for – she answered that approving a cross-border pipeline will set a precedent to permit Alaska its own gasline when that time comes.

Young, meanwhile, expressed his dissatisfaction over Obama’s link between the use of fossil fuels and climate change. He says villages like Kivalina need to adapt, as erosion threatens the town.

“We are the only thing that God ever created that doesn’t want to adapt,” said Young. “We can, we’ve done it – it’s happened 11 times before on this globe.”

Murkowski, Sullivan and Young will join Gov. Bill Walker and other Alaska legislative leaders in Kotzebue to discuss Arctic policy with Alaska Native leaders.