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Sarah
Palin Makes Another Fraudulent Claim About Alaska
24 November 2009 By
Dahr Jamail
As former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin launches her
national book tour, a former consultant questions more
specifics from her record as governor.
Palin, the former running mate to Sen. John McCain
during the 2008 presidential elections, continues to
claim that she effectively protected Alaska’s
environment, but a national academies peer review
panel has blasted her oil and gas risk assessment
plan, calling her environmental credentials into
question.
“A blistering critique of former Alaska Governor Sarah
Palin’s game plan for assessing the safety of the
state’s oil and gas facilities and operations by a
national panel of experts calls into question Palin’s
claim that, as governor, she made safeguarding of
Alaska’s resources a priority,” veteran Alaska oil and
gas analyst Richard Fineberg, who consulted to the
Palin administration in 2007 and early 2008 wrote on
November 15.
“The public would be well served by examination of
Palin’s executive style and performance as governor,”
Fineberg added, speaking to Truthout in Fairbanks,
“It’s important for people to know she was never there
to do work, particularly at this time when she is once
again in the public eye claiming to be a hard working
Alaskan who cares for people in her state.”
Fineberg, who lives in Esther, a small town near
Fairbanks, won state and national press awards as a
reporter during the 1970s and has observed Alaska
petroleum development for four decades, including a
stint as a senior adviser to the governor of Alaska on
oil and gas policy during the 1980s.
The critical review by the Transportation Research
Board (an arm of the National Research Council and the
National Academies) released October 15 concluded that
Palin’s program probably would not have worked.
“When she announced the Alaska oil and gas
infrastructure risk assessment project on May 1, 2007,
it (the project) was supposed to take three years to
complete,” Fineberg continued, “But it took the Palin
administration nearly two years just to come up with
its plan, only to have its proposal soundly rejected
by both the industry and the environmental community.
At two to two and a half years, the project Palin
launched is on hold and her successor looks for a new
plan - and a new contractor to carry it out.”
“This peer review panel told then Governor Palin that
her plan would simply not work,” Fineberg told
Truthout in Fairbanks, “She claimed to be protecting
the environment, but her whole plan was bullshit and
never got off the ground.”
Ignoring this failed plan, Palin praised her state’s
environmental performance in a National Review article
released October 16.
In that article, “DRILL: Petroleum is a major part of
America’s energy picture. Shall we get it here or
abroad?” Palin said the US produced only 4.95 million
barrels of oil per day (bpd) in 2008, while consuming
19.5 million bpd, creating the impression that the US
imported over 14 million bpd, or 75 percent of its
total oil needs.
But the same US Energy Information Administration (EIA)
data show that the US imported about 11 million bpd in
2008 (less than 60 percent of total oil consumption).
More importantly, imports are declining and EIA
anticipates dramatic long-term import reduction, to 41
percent of total consumption by 2030.
In her plea for more drilling, Palin - billed by her
admirers as an energy expert - also overlooked, or
ignored, this key fact.
Despite the intense media focus on the release of her
book, little attention has been paid to these
developments, or to her record as governor of Alaska.
“After all this was clear to her, she never did
anything, never lifted a finger, to make appropriate
changes to rectify this situation,” Fineberg added,
“And this was a hallmark of her administration while
she was governor here. She never did anything that
worked.”
“Her energy claims just never made any sense,”
Fineberg continued, “The implication is that her theme
is that we need to drill, because imports are so huge,
but EIA is stating the opposite-that imports were
actually declining. She is still up to her old tricks,
and she has never mastered the energy numbers, as she
leads people to believe she has.”
Fineberg told Truthout that while he worked for Palin
as a consultant, “I never spoke with her directly,
because she never spoke with any of her consultants
directly.”
Fineberg added, “We never had any contact with her.
She wasn’t there. She would delegate and vanish. She
never did anything to follow up on the risk assessment
information she hired us to provide to her.”
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