Well, I share your concern about our preparedness and we want to work with those that will follow you to ensure that we are ready to the fullest extent possible.

We have got over 60 percent of the national fishing totals for the Nation up there within our industry.

For those of us around the subcommittee here, we certainly appreciate it. But on behalf of the people of Alaska, I sincerely extend my appreciation.

You have clearly a resource gap that will impact our ability to provide for the level of service necessary and impact the economy there.

I remain concerned, though. We're moving forward with the Arctic study that the Coast Guard is moving.

I would like to have a discussion with you on that or whoever that you should designate because we do want to make sure that these vessels that have been identified as the replacement, again, are going to be accepted and that you do not…

How do we mesh this all together?

when President Obama delivered his first State of the Union Address several weeks ago, I tell you I was pleasantly surprised by his remarks on energy policy. In addition to calling for bipartisan legislation, the President indicated his…

To be fair, these proposals that were laid out do not necessarily come as a total surprise to us. Many of these were also part of last year's budget. Last September there was a senior official from the Treasury Department who raised some…

For electricity rates to drop in rural Alaska, we need federal grant assistance to help with the high capital costs of installing renewable energy in isolated areas.

To me it seems like a pretty good investment these days.

There is frustration on this side, but I know that there has been frustration on yours as well as to how you make that happen.

I am wondering when we might expect to get that rationale. Hopefully, it will be more instructive than just that the President has zeroed it out.

I appreciate that, and I think we are looking very carefully at what you have been able to actually spend down and where that has gone.

As of yesterday, the Department of Energy Web site showed that we have about $2.1 billion of the stimulus funds that was actually spent.

My take on it was it appeared to present a more centrist, kind of an all-of-the-above approach to the energy policy.

I would love to talk to you some more about it.

I appreciate your comments. I understand what you are saying, but I think it still takes me back to my initial concern...

I absolutely agree with you.

Just last Friday, 1 of the 2 companies working to build the line, the TransCanada-Exxon partnership, announced in its open season application filing that the line was going to cost somewhere between $32 billion and $41 billion to build.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Persily, you will recall that it was here in this committee back in 2004 that we worked through, and ultimately passed, the Natural Gas Pipeline Act of 2004, and there was a great deal of excitement back home…

I certainly know from his work in Juneau, for both Republican and Democratic administrations, that he is not one to let partisan pressures stand in the way of building the project.

I believe that Larry Persily is an excellent choice to take over the agency that we created in 2004 to coordinate the permitting and the environmental review to help get this pipeline built to move Alaska's natural gas to the markets in…

He is exceptionally, exceptionally knowledgeable about the problems that we have confronted in past efforts to get a gas line built in Alaska.

In terms of the cost estimates that have been released just last week, the TransCanada-Exxon group came back and indicates that we are looking at a project somewhere between $30 billion and $40 billion.