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Explosive Device Found at Anchorage Airport Said to be for Avalanches

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Photo Credit: Wonderlane/flickrThe employer of a man whose carry-on bag was found to contain a small explosive device at the Anchorage airport said Monday he was carrying avalanche-control equipment.

The device triggered an hour-long shutdown of security screening at the airport Sunday afternoon.

A statement issued Monday by ConocoPhillips Alaska said the device was for avalanche control and there was no ill will intended.

Conoco spokeswoman Amy Burnett told The Anchorage Daily News (https://bit.ly/1eJKOuv ) she could not release any personal information about the passenger or say if he faces any criminal charges.

Shared Services, a co-venture between Conoco and BP, transports more than 20,000 employees and contract workers between Anchorage, Fairbanks and the North Slope every month, Burnett said.

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Conoco-Phillips Plans New Well in Alaska National Petroleum Reserve

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(Reuters) -ConocoPhillips has applied for permits to develop a new field in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, a vast unit of federal land that has yet to yield commercially produced oil, according to the federal agency managing the reserve.

ConocoPhillips applied to drill a production well at a site it calls GMT1, part of the Greater Mooses Tooth unit established in an area where its exploration wells struck oil, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) spokeswoman Erin Curtis said on Friday.

The company has also applied for a permit to build roads and other infrastructure needed to access the site, Curtis said.

A decision by senior corporate leaders on whether to sanction the project is expected in the second half of 2014, said Amy Burnett, a spokeswoman for ConocoPhillips in Alaska.

The Indiana-sized reserve, on the western side of the North Slope, was established in 1923 by President Warren Harding to provide fuel to the military.

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Oil Industry Targets Senators in Alaska Oil Tax Fight

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The energy industry is making a concerted push to defeat state senators in Alaska who have blocked a $2 billion tax cut favored by oil producers.

Through television and radio ads and direct mail, industry-linked advocacy groups are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to urge Alaska’s 506,000 voters to cast their ballots for “oil tax reform.” That would entail ousting a bipartisan group of 16 state senators in the 20-member chamber, all but one of whom are up for re-election this year, political experts say.

The big three energy companies—Exxon Mobil Corp., XOM -1.45% ConocoPhillips, COP -1.32% and BP BP.LN -1.40% PLC—can’t legally make direct donations to campaigns. But oil-company-employee political-action committees have made contributions, energy executives have held fundraisers and two Republican senate candidates work for the industry.

“We’re proud that we’ve been part of the Alaska family of companies that has brought this wealth to its people,” said Bob Bell, a Republican Senate candidate from Anchorage whose engineering firm did nearly $1 million in work for BP last year and who favors the tax cut.

But the targeted senators raised and spent more than their challengers according to the latest campaign-spending reports, although a last-minute surge of spending could change that balance. They have received backing in part from government-employee unions, which have grown along with government payrolls because of an influx of oil taxes. The taxes and other oil-related payments account for 90% of state revenue.

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