Oil and gas leasing: gaining perspective.

• Author: Tyson, Ray
• Position: Alaska director of US Mineral Management Service Alan Powers

Responsible for engineering 17 state oil and gas leases and raising $6.4 billion for Alaska, Al Powers reflects on his 11 years as Alaska director of the U.S. Mineral Management Service.

After serving 41 years under 10 U.S. presidents, you'd think Alan Powers might have lost his wit somewhere along that bumpy political road. But just days before his retirement, clad in blue jeans and a sweater and surrounded by decades of memorabilia, the man who shaped Alaska's federal oil and gas leasing program still has his sense of humor.

Powers, 64 figures that during all his years here and in Washington, D.C., he worked on 39 offshore lease sales nationwide, an effort that raised a staggering $28 billion for the federal treasury.

"I think that's pretty amazing," says Powers. "There are bureaucrats who haven't been able to spend that much money, much less take it in."

Director of the U.S. Mineral Management Service (MMS) Alaska regional office for 11 years before his recent retirement, Powers has been associated with every federal offshore lease sale in Alaska, a total of 17 dating back to 1976. Those sales alone raked in $6.4 billion while opening more than 135 million acres to exploration along Alaska's sprawling Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).

Although Powers describes his long career with the federal government as " a great ride," it wasn't always a smooth one.

Powers was there in the late 1970s and early 1980s when it seemed oil companies couldn't drill fast enough, spurred on by the dream of finding another supergiant oil reservoir like Prudhoe Bay. But in recent years, as the oil industry began exiting the state for better opportunities abroad, he has seen the federal OCS program contract and his staff dwindle from 225 to 145, with more cuts expected this year.

To make matters worse, not a single exploratory well among the more than 90 drilled on the Alaska OCS has turned up a commercial discovery, an industry record the former director finds "disappointing."

"I wouldn't have had as much enjoyment in this program, or stuck with it this long, if I didn't think production was the ultimate goal," Powers explains. "It's not just the planning for sales, or writing environmental impact statements, or regulating the work. The goal of the program is to produce energy domestically, because that's where national benefits are generated."

Country Beginnings

Powers began life in 1929, a long way from either the oilpatch or the nation's capital, where he spent nearly two decades serving in various presidential administrations before transferring to Alaska in early 1983.

A self-described "country boy," Powers was born in Eugene, Ore., and reared amid the picturesque Cascade Mountains along Oregon's MacKenzie River. He loved fishing and the great outdoors and even worked as a river guide during his teens. He also was a rock...