Midnight Oil

If you liked Midnight Oil, you'll surely like Cruise Town, a new podcast from KTOO about Juneau, Alaska -- a town of 32,000 people, playing host to over a million cruise ship passengers every year. It explores how Juneau became a cruise town, what it’s like to live in a cruise town and what the city’s future holds in light of the industry’s explosive growth.

Alaska is on the verge of a new oil boom -- and the village of Nuiqsut is right in the middle. Oil development is affecting Nuiqsut more than any other indigenous community in Alaska. And the village faces tough choices. How do you maintain a way of life when the oil industry is knocking on your door?

Midnight Oil is back! Alaska is on the verge of a new oil boom -- and the village of Nuiqsut is right in the middle. Oil development is affecting Nuiqsut more than any other indigenous community in Alaska. And the village faces tough choices. How do you maintain a way of life when the oil industry is knocking on your door? Reporter Elizabeth Harball tells the story in a bonus episode of Midnight Oil coming May 9, 2019.

Alaska’s new governor promised to pay dividends of more than $6,000 when he was running for office. But delivering on that promise isn’t going to be simple. It might not even be possible, because the legislature that holds the permanent fund’s purse strings. What do lawmakers think about Dunleavy’s promise? Will they work with him or against him to balance the budget and pay big dividends?

Midnight Oil listeners know that Alaska’s an oil state and that Alaskans get a personal cut of the state’s oil wealth every year in the form of a dividend. But oil prices are way down and the state has a multi billion dollar budget deficit. Our new podcast ‘Paying Dividends’ explores the struggle our governor and lawmakers face to keep paying those oil checks and also keep the state running.

Climate change is now an undeniable reality for the oil industry. It threatens their reputations,  their business models - and in some cases, the actual physical infrastructure they’ve built to extract all that oil in the first place. That’s forcing the industry to confront some uncomfortable questions.

As polar bears lose their habitat in the Arctic, they have no choice but to come to shore and try to live part of their lives on land. That means they come into the village of Kaktovik sometimes, breaking into people’s houses or food storage at the risk of getting shot. But it also means they are more visible and accessible than ever for tourists who are willing to pay a lot of money to see them before they’re gone.

For years, fishermen in Alaska have worried that climate change would threaten their livelihoods. Now, it has. In late 2013, a strikingly warm mass of water arrived in the Gulf of Alaska and stayed for three years. Scientists called it "the blob." Fishermen started to notice a drastic drop in the population of cod- an unassuming fish that’s been an economic powerhouse for the community of Kodiak. As fishermen struggle to adjust to the lowest cod numbers on record, scientists are asking if it’s a preview of what’s to come as the ocean warms.

Which side is Lisa Murkowski on? Alaska’s senior senator faces an impossible balancing act: How to reconcile her state’s dependence on the oil industry with the fact that Alaska is extremely vulnerable to climate change. She says we need to reduce carbon emissions but remains an ardent advocate for more oil production. She straddles both sides of the debate. But in her straddling, she also represents us all: how do we come to terms with our dependence on the very products that are threatening the globe?  

The Alaska Native village of Newtok is disappearing. It’s rapidly losing ground to a combination of thawing permafrost and coastal erosion and residents worry their traditional way of life could disappear with the land. Newtok’s residents are some of the first Americans to face this problem, but they won’t be the last. And their predicament raises the question: What do we owe communities in the path of climate change?

On August 9, Alaska's Energy Desk launches our second season of Midnight Oil. It's called The Big Thaw. And it's about one of the biggest challenges facing the state right now and in the years ahead: climate change. 

Today, the trans-Alaska pipeline carries a quarter of what it did in its heyday. And so Alaska is facing the question its been ducking for forty years: Will we always be an oil state?

The Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds and brought commercial fishing in some of Alaska’s most productive waters to a standstill. It’s often talked about as an unprecedented, unthinkable event, but it was, in fact thinkable, and people tried to prevent it.

Less than ten years after oil started flowing, Alaska’s economy cratered. The recession was quick and deep. Ten banks failed, real estate values plummeted and tens of thousands of people fled the state. It was Alaska’s great recession, 20 years before the rest of the country went through almost the same thing.

In Alaska, we don’t pay income tax. We don’t pay state sales tax. But once a year every man, woman and child gets a cut of the state’s oil wealth. There are plenty of other oil states in the world, but Alaska is the only one that treats residents like shareholders and sends them dividend checks every year.

The trans-Alaska pipeline was the largest privately-funded construction project in the world, built across the biggest U.S. state and faced with unprecedented natural obstacles. It came with an $8 billion price tag, but true costs and benefits of the pipeline are still being calculated.

Environmental groups fought hard to stop the trans-Alaska pipeline. Ultimately they lost. But along the way they turned an obscure bit of federal code into required environmental scrutiny for every major construction project.  

When Alaska became a state, the federal government agreed to hand over more than 100 million acres. There was just one problem. Alaska Native people already claimed that land. Then Alaska struck oil, and the question of who owned what land in the 49th state went all the way to the White House.

Oil started flowing down the trans-Alaska pipeline forty years ago, transforming Alaska into a wealthy oil state. But if it weren’t for a few determined individuals, the giant oil field that started it all might still be hidden under the tundra today.

On June 20, Alaska's Energy Desk launches Midnight Oil, a new podcast about the 800-mile pipeline that shaped Alaska as we know it. Eight episodes in all, releasing every Tuesday through August 8th.