- Before heading out to go gangbusters at our businesses, you might want to stop by the bank and withdraw some cash. Politico explains that to many in the Black Hat hacker world, today is known as Hack Friday as it has been established that cybercrime is unstoppable thus leaving our commerce sector vulnerable to not just theft, but attack.
- Reuters is reporting that Saudi Arabia’s oil minister told fellow OPEC members that they weren’t going to cut production so that they could effectively kill the shale oil boom in the U.S. On Friday, oil dropped again to about $72 a barrel. Alaska’s current budget relies on $117 barrel per day oil.
- Alaska Airlines knows their customer base and shows it when they added a flight to Juneau for Inauguration Day. Gov.-elect Bill Walker showed his appreciation.
- Nevada has become the first state in the nation to suspend Uber’s operations. Apparently, all the great PR advice it’s getting from David Plouffe and company, which it badly needs, isn’t getting through to the court system.
- More on Uber: I missed this very smart column in the Anchorage Press by Ivan Moore last week about Andrew Halcro’s blind support of Uber.
- The Dispatch reports that the new administration will review Caelus’ application to pay a reduced royalty rate for a new North Slope field.
- The Hill has a list of 2016 presidential hopefuls that are truly diverse. The current pack leaders are Sen. Rand Paul, Gov. Chis Christie and Former Gov. Jeb Bush.
- The Kenai Senior Center received extra funding from the state, $16,515 more than what the Kenai city council expected through a state grant. The Peninsula Clarion has the details on how it will be utilized.
- The New York Times reports that activists are banding together to fund travel expenses for patients seeking access to the ever-shrinking number of abortion clinics.
- Per the Juneau Empire: Juneau wants the roughly $400,000 back that it spent on a parking meter system that doesn’t work. However, the company Aparc that sold the borough the faulty meters, declared bankruptcy. Juneau’s Assembly will soldier on and try to get at least some of what it’s owed.
- Who knew that Black Friday was America’s number 1 day to purchase a gun? The Washington Post does and has the details, including charts.
- The Dispatch has an article about a Mat-Su farmer taking his anti-road tax all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court. Challenges to our current tax system are admirable as it strengthens our democratic process, but strains of I fought the law come to mind.
- The public will have a chance to share their ideas about the proposed smoke pollution regulations next week in Fairbanks as the borough area prepares to comply with federal clean air statutes. The Fairbanks News Miner has details.
- Don’t know if you caught this yesterday, but one of the best renditions of the National Anthem, rivaling Whitney Houston, was sung by 12-year-old Quintavious Johnson.
I have noticed that the Walker Mallott dream team has former Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho as a very active player and given the state’s current fiscal problems, I would like to provide a cautionary note about his involvement.
Juneau is in a pretty fair pickle over Bruce Botelho’s failed idea’s. His fiscal ideas left the city operating in a long-term deficit even while continuing to build new infrastructure that the city cannot afford to operate. His pet new parking system never did work and by all accounts never could have. Yet, he chose to invest $400,000 in a ‘one of’ new parking system for downtown Juneau. Once built and supposedly in operation the public learned that the system would not and could not work as designed and the city was forced to sue the manufacturer who immediately filed for bankruptcy protection.
While Mayor, Botelho was also responsible for another abject failure… One in which his idea to build a new capitol building was developed using a grant from the State of Alaska and funds from the City of Juneau. This project produced three different design options for a new capitol that were so ugly that when he unveiled the three options to the public the reaction was so bad he had to cancel the project entirely and then fumble for a way to repay the State the $954,000 in grant money that had been wasted.
The falling price of oil is frightening. Hopefully this won’t be sustained.
There are, however, some positive developments that we shouldn’t lose sight of. Here are some of the headlines from today’s Petroleum News:
Liberty again: Having purchased a large slice of BP’s interests in four BP northern Alaska oil fields, Hilcorp Alaska is going to file a new proposed plan of the development for the Liberty field, offshore in the Beaufort Sea. Hilcorp has acquired a 50 percent interest in Liberty and is now the field operator. ….Essentially, on the North Slope Hilcorp will adopt the same strategy as it has been employing in the Cook Inlet basin, where as a consequence of a multitude of small development and upgrade projects the company has doubled oil production from the aging fields that the company acquired from Chevron and Marathon.
Another rig for Kuparuk: ConocoPhillips Alaska has contracted with Nabors Alaska Drilling for a new coiled tubing drilling rig, the company’s president, Trond-Erik Johansen, told the Resource Development Council’s annual conference in Anchorage Nov.
Increased activity. Since 2012 BP has increased its North Slope activity level by more than 50 percent – the company is on track to add an additional drilling rig operation to its operations in 2015, with a further rig due to go into action in 2016, Weiss said.
Repsol spending $240 million this year: Repsol E&P USA Inc. plans to spend $240 million on its exploration work this winter.
Caelus planning to spend $500M in 2015 on Slope exploration, development.
Armstrong left ‘a lot of money on the table’ in recent lease sales, but worth it to advance development.
Oil industry employment hits records. Employment in the Alaska oil industry looks set to hit a record level again this year, Neal Fried, an economist with the Alaska Department of Labor, told the Resource Development Council’s annual conference on Nov. 19. Apart from 2010, each year since 2007 has marked a new record for employment levels in the industry. The employment level in the North Slope industrial complex is particularly impressive, with an increase of about 1,200 in personnel compared with last year,
UBER is unfair and predatory. Yes, its a great service and theoir technology is the direction I want to go. Finding the balance however is key. The head of UBER needs a pr class himself from what I read about the guy. Sounds to be a bit obnoxtious.