North slope-based corporations look for opportunities close to home: arctic drilling and logistics translate into jobs and benefits for shareholders.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Arctic Oil & Gas

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For the past decade, communities on Alaska's North Slope have kept a close eye on oil and gas exploration plans for the Outer Continental Shelf. Development offered tremendous economic opportunities for the region.

So when Royal Dutch Shell announced it was pulling out of the region in 2015, relinquishing most of the $2.1 billion in leases it had acquired, it hit the communities hard. Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corporation, the village corporation for Barrow with a diversified family of businesses centered on oil and gas development in the Arctic, lost more than five hundred jobs, says President and CEO Anthony Edwardsen. Olgoonik, the village corporation for Wainwright, lost another one hundred jobs.

Despite the setback, North Slope-based Alaska Native corporations are still working together to support the oil and gas industry by tackling regulatory issues and infrastructure deficiencies that contributed to the demise of the offshore exploration projects, says Teresa Imm, director of resource development at Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC).

"Our biggest struggle we had was with the Obama administration," Imm says. "We came so close to getting a lot of stuff done and when it came to the regulatory challenge--that put a huge damper on us." For instance, oil companies were allowed to drill twenty-five holes in the Gulf of Mexico, but only two in the Chukchi. "There was no balance in it," Imm says.

The corporations reached out to Alaska's congressional delegation and the Obama administration, Edwardsen says.

"We tried very hard to convince the Secretary of the Interior," he says. "We said we had to have this. They put so much on Shell, it made it very difficult for all of us. We don't want to go through that again. Our people rely on industry and when we lost those 537 jobs it was hard. It had a huge impact on everything."

AIO Consortium

In addition to her role at ASRC, Imm is also general manager of Arctic Inupiat Offshore (AIO), a consortium made up of ASRC and six village corporations: Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corporation (Barrow); Tikigaq Corporation (Point Hope); Olgoonik Corporation (Wainwright); Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation (Kaktovik); Atqasuk Corporation (Atqasuk); and Nunamiut Corporation (Anaktuvuk Pass).

Through AIO, the corporations acquired an interest in Shell's activities in the Chukchi Sea. Now, however, they're using their experience to help other companies succeed on the North Slope, which they hope will again...