when i left office, gloria was the president of the philippines and the whole time i was there, our classmate was the head of the saudi version of the cia. later ambassador to the united states, the united kingdom. i was here with fascinating people at a fascinating time. but it affected me mostly because of the teachers i had. and the people i went to school with and the conversations we had about what was going on in our class we had. it was very different than now. we did not have, my class, foreign service, an elective course until the second semester of our junior year. a big controversy. but i loved it. it, i doubt very seriously if i ever would have become president had i not come to georgetown and

i'm certain i would not have done whatever good i did do, i would have done less well if i hadn't been here. >> thank you. this is from dorea, a sophomore in the college. sort of two pronged. where do you see this generation of young adults going in in what way is our path going to be dirnt than before? >> what has happened in technology to this day, it will look like child's play. over the next 20 to 30 years. i think most of you will live to be 90 years old or more, unless some accident where you have an environmentally caused cancer we don't know how to treat yet. i think that you will live in a time where the technological revolution will extend into artificial intelligence and

we'll be able to do things we've never been able to do before. i think the combination of nano technology and improvements and the continuing -- of the genome will lead us to have affordable four times a year health exam that will basically involve going into a canister and being scanned and i think one of the biggest debates in medicine within 20 years will be for example since we all have cancerous cells moving around in our body all the time and most of them are just destroyed, one of the great questions will be now that we can see this microscopic tumor, should we zap it out now or wait till later. your life will be dramatically different. i believe that you will be given one final chance to figure out how to avoid the most calamitous consequences of climate change

and i think there will be more economically beneficial ways to do it than there are now. i think you'll have to worry a lot about water. i think california's a canary in a coal mine. i think that will be a big issue. i think you'll have to worry about how to feed a planet of 9 billion people if we go that far. if we modernize enough in the modern world, we may stop at 8 billion because one thing that across all religions and cultures that slows the birthrate is the education of women and the economic development of the poor. so, i think you live in an

exciting time. i think that it is unlikely that these id logically driven conflicts we're having now with nonstate actors will be fully resolved. i hope and pray that we will leave behind a system where we can say with some confidence that we can keep really big, bad things from happening. that's why this negotiation with iran is so important. maybe for reasons that haven't been much in the press. for example, if they get a bomb, then there's four or five arab countries that can afford one. we've got six more people with nuclear capacity, they're expensive to build, maintain and very expensive to secure and if you're going to have a bomb that you've got to have excess material and that's what you'll have to watch. when you grow up. what about the excess? because any country that uses a

big bomb knows that it can be annihilated. but that material, it's i consider it a minor miracle of the modern world that the fis l stocks of pakistan as far as we know even though mr. khan gave all the nuclear technology to north korea and others, as far as we know, their materials have not been stolen, sold or given away. so, i think you'll have to worry about all that. but i believe that you'll live longer, have more options and you will, we will probably not have fully resolved the problem between growing productivity and adequate employment. but i do think we'll do a better job in the time you're raising your own kids and living your own lives. i think we will do a better job in figuring out how to more

fairly apportion the waelt we are creating. i think there will be more shared prosperity, but what nobody can really tell you is that if we've entered a period where the technological changes are so rapid that we won't be able to create enough employment in a conventional sense for 40 hours a week to keep the populous employed, so if that happens, we'll have to think about some radical changes in the arrangement of labor. carlos slim said the other day, he's pretty smart. that he thought some time in this new century, we would maybe be down to a three-day workweek because of the breathtaking increases in productivity. if so, have at it. have a lot of fun on your leisure time. not forget to surf. >> this may be the easiest question or the toughest. what was your most difficult decision as president or otherwise?

we can pass. >> the ones i had to make? >> yeah. >> well, interestingly enough, they weren't the ones that were the most politically unpopular. like i said, 80% of the people are against what i did in mexico. easy decision. 74% of the people were against my first act which was to put together a big aid package for russiaful they were then so poor in '93, they couldn't afford to bring their soldiers home from the baltic stalts. a majority was against what i did in bosnia, when we started. the most difficult decision were my version of the aids crisis. i ran for president because i thought trickle down economics was wrong.

we had a robust economic climate for most of the 1980s. and ordinary people weren't for that at all. poverty had gone up. wages were stag nat. and i wanted to give the middle class a tax cut and right before i was elected, the government said oh, by the way, we, the deficit's going to be twice as big as we told you it was. oh, by the way. i could play like it didn't happen and present my original plan or go back to the core strategy, which was to get america growing again, we had to bring interest rates down. we had a normal economy,

inflation, interest rates were getting high. and they were higher than inflation. so, my gamble was if i could get interest rates down, there would be this huge amount of private investment which would overcome the contractionary impact of the plan i presented, which called for spepding cuts and tax increases, but i hated to give up something i really wanted to provide and i had to choose that or doubling the earned income tax credit. which benefitted lower income workers and i just don't think a society as rich as ours should allow anybody to have kids in the house and work full time and still be in poverty. i just think that's wrong. so, i did it, all i heard for two years, he broke his promise on the middle class tax cut. the interest rate declined to $2200 to the average family in lower mortgage rate, college loan rates and credit card rates. and when we passed a balanced

budget bill, we passed a middle class tax cut, but that was a hard decision. it was hard for me not to act alone in bosnia. we all knew what serbia was doing in bosnia and i sent my then secretary of state warren christopher around europe and asked them to help and they didn't want to do it and thousand reasons why. and i decided i shouldn't do that because it wouldn't be sustainable. the europeans had to buy in. they had to own the fact that if they wanted europe that was united, democratic and free for the first time in history, the balkans were going to be part of it and so, i waited until we could get a unified response. it was a painful wait. a lot of people died in that wait. some of the decisions i regret most were not hard, but were

wrong. we didn't even talk seriously about whether we should send troops to rwanda because the public was exhausted with what happened at black hawk down. and somalia. and because we were involved in bosnia and that was much more in the news and frankly, we didn't have any idea they could kill 10% of the country in 90 days with machetes, essentially. so, sometimes, the things you regret most were not hard at the time. we should have been a little harder. i'll always regret we didn't have a long, drawn out debate on it. didn't even really discuss it and i spent my life trying to make it up to rwanda and i'm about to get there, i think. i'm working on it.

>> this is a question i wanted to ask. earlier on, you committed yourself to public service. you outlined your fundamental purpose. vocational commitment like that, did you ever go through a time when you really questioned, say, what am i doing here? and tempted to withdraw? >> just to give it up? >> public service. >> well, i did a couple of times when i was governor. i was governor a long time. at least i proved i could hold down a job. but i, you know, i served a very long time and people of my native state were good enough to elect me five times. based on recent events, i don't know if i could win again down there, but so, there were times when i just got burned out, you know?

but i never wanted, i'd always find something new to do. and i told people one reason i loved being in public life, it was like peeling an onion that had no end. there was always another lair. it was always something new, interesting. always something to engage the imagination and stretch your capacities. so, i did and when, when the president were hot on our white water business and i realized i knew it wasn't on a level, there was nothing to it and that there couldn't have been, i invested

in a land deal and lost money. the guy later went in the business and failed the smallest in the country and i didn't ever borrow any money from them. it was a made up deal. it was heartbreaking to me to see otherwise sensible people treated like it was something, but it never made me want to quit. i was raised, had an unusual upbringing, but i was raised not to quit. we're not big on quitting in my family. you may notice that. the -- and -- so, it was awful. but i learned to kind of just wall it off. and i think you know, i also felt maybe this was arrogant and i shouldn't have felt that way. but i spent a lot of time when i was president reading the history of other presidencies, including not well-known presidents. and i realized that the success

of a given president is it's first, determined by the time in which you live. i mean, you're going to be a great president or flop depending on whether you try to be a gave or he gave us a democracy. he made the right decision, therefore even though government had nowhere near the range of things to do than it does now, he was a great president and made really good decisions on the big things. lincoln became president when the whole question was whether or not the union would survive or not. a lot of people thought it wouldn't. a lot of people thought the south -- we wouldn't hang around. the union wouldn't hang around long enough to do it. he was an roosevelt had the depression and world war ii, but it also depends on whether the

skills and the psychological of a person in a given leadership position actually fit well with the challenges of that particular moment. and when i read the, all these histories of the lesser known presidents, i realized some of them were really well suited to govern when they did and others might have been quite successful had they governed in another time, but not then. like if you, just an example, a lot of people think franklin pierce is one of the worst presidents we had. and if you measure that because he was elected right before the civil war and he couldn't stop the country's drift toward war and couldn't figure out how to stop the spread of slavery and this and that, that's absolutely true, but he was an immensely successful soldier in the

mexican war. he was a successful member of congress and went home and became governor of new hampshire. only other governor of a small state to be elected president. and he was on his way to be inaugurated with his only child. presidents were then inaugurated in march. he took a train to washington. on the way, there was a train wreck. nobody was hurt very bad. there were a couple of broken bones, except his 11-year-old son, who fell on his neck, snapped it and died. nobody else would have gotten more than a broken bone and that's how he began his presidency. with his wife in a virtually catatonic state of grief, so i always wondered and he had different circumstances, he may have quite a successful

president. ruled in a calmer time and i'm not sure that it was in the cause for anybody to succeed before the country split apart. so, any way, that's what i think about, but i don't, by and large, i think when you get tired, you want to bag it, unless you're old and you think i've got three years left and i'd like to spend it doing something else, you ought to hang in there and do it. if you believe you made the right decision in the first place and you ought to go, somebody will push you out one way or the other. but you ought not to open the door if you think, if your vision has not been fulfilled. i'm not big on quitting. i'd rather hang around and fight it through and if you need to go, somebody will kick you out. >> all right, mr. president, we're allowed one more question. you've obviously read very widely over a long time. if you had to recommend one book, what would it be? >> one book? >> that's all you get. >> you mentioned one earlier, but --

>> the meditations of marcus -- >> he did it. >> thanks, everybody. really appreciate it. i really appreciate it. democratic presidential candidate hillary clinton will be in las vegas today. she's expected to talk about immigration. cspan will have her comments at 5:45 p.m. eastern.

on saturday potential republican candidates will be at the south carolina freedom summit. senators ted cruz and marco rubio will join ben carson carly fiorina rick perry and rick santorum in greenville, south carolina. live coverage begins saturday morning at 10:00 a.m. eastern. >> presidential candidates often release books to introduce themselves to voters. here's a look at some recent books by some candidates for president. hillary clinton looks back on her time serving in the obama administration in hard choices. in american dreams, florida senator marco rubio outlines his plan to restore economic opportunity. former arkansas governor, mike huckabee, gives his take on politics and culture in god, guns, grits and gravy and in

blue collar conservatives, potential presidential candidate rick santorum argues the republican party must focus on the working class in order to retake the white house. in a fighting chance massachusetts senator elizabeth warren recounts the events in her life that shaped her career as an educator and politician. scott walker argues republicans most offer bold solutions to fix the country and have the courage to implement them in unintimidated and rand paul calls for smaller government and more bipartisanship in taking a stand. more potential presidential candidates with recent books include jeb bush in immigration wars, he along with clint bolik argue for new immigration policies. in stand for something, ohio governor john casic calls for a return to traditional american values. former virginia senator james webb looks back on his time serving in the military and in

the senate in i heard my country calling. independent vermont senator bernie sanders recently announced his intention to seek the democratic nomination for president. his book, the speech, is a printing of his eight-hour long filibuster against tax cuts and in promises to keep, vice president joe biden looks back on his career in politics and explains his guiding principles. neurosurgeon ben carson calls for greater individual reasonability to preserve america's future in one nation. in fed up rick perry explains government has become too intrusive and must get out of the way. another politician who has expressed interest in running for president is lincoln chafey. in against the tide rehe recounts serving in the senate. carly fiorina shares lessons

he's learned from difficulties and triumphs in rising to the challenge. louisiana governor, bobby jindal criticizes the obama administration and explains why conservative exclusions are feeded in washington in leadership and in crisis. and finally in a time for truth another declared presidential candidate, texas senator ted cruz recounts his journey from a cuban immigrant son to the senate. look for his book in june. remarkable partnerships iconic women. their storyies in first ladies, the book. >> she did save the portrait of washington which was one of the things that endeared her to the nation. >> whoever could find out where francis was staying what she was wearing, what she was doing, what she looked like who she was seeing, that was going to help sell papers. >> she takes over a radio station and starts running it. how do you do that? and she did it. >> she exerted enormous

influence because she would move a mountain to make sure her husband was projected. >> first lady, now a book, looking inside the personal life of every first lady in american history based on original interviews from cspan's first ladies series. learn about their unique partnerships with their presidential spouses. the lives of 45 iconic american women, filled with lively stories of fascinating women who survived the scrutiny of the white house, sometimes at a great personal cost, often changes history. first ladies is an illuminating, entertaining and inspiring read now available in a hard cover of ebook. here are a few of the book festivals we'll be covering on book tv. in the middle of may, we'll visit maryland for live coverage

of the gaithersburg book festival. and then we'll close out may at book expo america in new york city. where the publishing industry showcasing their upcoming books. in the first week of june we're live for the "chicago tribune" un fest including our program with lawrence wright and your phone calls. that's this spring on cspan 2's book tv. last month the united states took over as chair of the arctic counsel. coming up next, a discussion on the u.s. agenda focusing on climate change pollution, maritime safety and the health of arctic inhabitants. center for strategic and international studies hosted the event.

>> thank you, travis, so much. must have been a loose wire. thank you so much, we're now going to turn to a discussion very much in keeping with senator murkowski's conversation about the need for economic growth and the importance of energy and resource development. all four of us on this panel have one thing in common. probably more than that, but i at least know one ning in common. that is we all participated in the national petroleum counsel's national research study. i was a supporting cast member on the subcommittee where drew also as well, but the co-captains of the subcommittee are carol lloyd and paula grant from the department of energy. so what i will do is introduce

the wonderful power panel and to talk a little bit about the study which was released on march 27th and i know carol has done the study and you may have never heard about it and we wanted to share with you this study and more importantly talk about a broader array and maybe go beyond the study and before i do that let me introduce the wonderful and distinguished panel and dr. paula grant is the deputy assistant secretary for oil and natural gas and the department of energy's office of fossil energy where she administers both domestic and international oil and gas programs. she previously worked at the american gas association at duke energy and she has a very impressive academic background. we have miss carol lloyd who is the engineering vice president at exxon mobil's upstream research company. she also has a long,

distinguished career with the engineering manager at exxon oil and imperial oil and she is the smartest person on technology i have ever met. so if you have some real technical, write to her. write to her and finally to my right we have ms. drew pierce, son year policy adviser for the environment and natural resources and government affairs group. drew is an alaskan and she has been secretary of interior on a range of issues specifically with alaska affairs and she was appointed by the george w.

bush's office coordinator in the office of the federal coordinator for alaska national gas transportation projects. that's a title. that's a mouthful, but drew is a legislator. she served for 17 years in the alaskan state legislature and she will help us in a very powerful perspective from the state of alaska. so we have some great slides. each of the panelists have a short presentation and we will begin with paula from the department of energy's perspective turn to darryl for the industry perspective and drew's going to do cleanup and then we'll ask questions and welcome you into it so with that, again, thank you, paula, the floor is yours. >> thanks, heather. it's a pleasure to be here today and thanks everyone for coming in from this beautiful spring day. i'm very pleased to see that spring has finally arrived in

d.c. i think it was warmer in alaska when we were in juneau than it was in d.c. so it's a funny world. we are really thrilled to have the opportunity to talk about the arctic and alaska and our oil and gas resources here today. it's a very important moment in our history as we think about the arctic and we'll share a little bit of the administration's perspective and sort of where our head is right now on the arctic. i think many of you know because you're in the room here focused on the arctic that the president has set a national imperative for the u.s. to take a leadership role in ensuring stewardship of the arctic as set out in the national strategy for the arctic a couple of years ago and the following implementation plan. our leadership and our presence in the region would be vital over the coming decade to ensuring continued u.s. leadership and in setting standards of behavior and norms of behavior and activity in the region and the -- as the climate changes and cs as begin to be less prevalent in some areas we're seeing an increased amount

of activity in the arctic and from a commercial perspective and the significant increase in shipping activity are from a military perspective with demonstrations of activity on other parts as well as an increased presence in other countries looking at opportunities even if they aren't arctic nations in the regions so there is tremendous opportunity for the united states to lead as this activity increases and it's within this context that the secretary in 2013 that the national petroleum council conduct a study looking at what is the nature of the oil and gas resource in the arctic and what are the technologies and practices available and are needed to ensure that those resources are developed in a prudent manner and prudent

encompasses as carol will talk through the results of the research work. prudent encompasses the idea that the resources are valuable and that developing them has national and energy security benefits must be developed in a manner that minimizes the negative impacts on other natural resources like our air and our land and our water as well as taking into account the benefits that can be accrued to local communities that can contribute to the resource development. so it's -- that is the question or the request that the secretary made of the national petroleum council. carol, in a bit, is going to walk you through how the mpc responded to that request. i want to talk just for a couple of minutes and heather has admonished me to be brief. there's so much to talk about in this area that the secretary was

very pleased to receive the results of the study as heather mentioned at the end of march and it's very timely, as many of you know the u.s. will assume the chairmanship of the arctic council in the next couple of weeks, actually, and we have an opportunity to work through our leadership of that council to ensure not only leadership in stewardship of the arctic environment, but also to find ways to enhance international cooperation and through the arctic council we have demonstrated an ability to the cooperate internationally on science and technology and that really forms the core of the secretary's request. it's a question about what the science and technologies needed to ensure the prudent development of oil and gas resources and in particular what could the department of energy do to further advance science

and technology. one of the key aspects of the recommendations that you'll hear about today is a recognition that in order to develop and realize the promise of oil and gas resources in the alaskan arctic that it will be vital to secure the public confidence that those resources can be developed in a responsible manner. in order to ensure that public confidence we're going to have to make sure that we are conducting science in demonstrating technologies in transparent manners. so that means in some sort of public manner, whether it's through the work of the national labs. we have the work of national labs across the country that are part of the department of energy. whether it's through public, private partnerships and many of which are referenced and surveyed in the study or through

academic work, but in order for policymakers to rely on science and technology demonstration in policy making, that work is going to have to be done in a transparent manner that the public can have confidence in. i think you will see quite a few of the recommendations in the study have that in mind and we very much look forward in identifying ways that the department of energy can be part of that continued resource and that demonstration. the -- many will ask why the arctic, why now outside of this leadership imperative when we have such a tremendous abundance of domestic oil and gas in the lower 48, and the simple answer to that question is that we make -- we should be making decisions at a policy level that have our children in mind. the office that i have the pleasure and the privilege of managing right now the initial work was done in the marcellus in 1978 and horizontal drilling

and hydraulic fracturing and the office spent about $130 million much of it in partnership with george mitchell and as many of you know, perfected it and demonstrated in the barnet and north texas, and that knowledge has been applied to a very prolific resource that is found in oil and has generated an incredible abundance of domestic supply. the reason that we need to be thinking about the arctic now is because it will take us a good decade of exploration in proving up this resource to get into the place where we are at a significant level of commercial production. so the work we did in 19678 to provide for the domestic supplies that we have now, that's where we need to be in the arctic and this is about the children in securing that energy security and that's the why now and the arctic. and i encourage you all to take a look at the report that

carol's going to share here in a bit. i think it's a very valuable contribution to our understanding of the oil and gas resource as well as the environment in which it will be developed and how we ensure it's done in eye prudent manner. thank you for being here today. >> thank you so much. i don't mean to be such an ogre as far as time and short presentations and lots of questions are always the best. carol, over to you. walk us through the highlights of the petroleum council's work. good morning, and thank you so very much for the invitation to be here to talk about the arctic and to talk about the national petroleum council study. i would offer for you three key takeaways that i'm going to focus on in the next five to seven minutes and then i would be pleased to take your questions. the first takeaway is the very collaborative process that was mentioned.

paula mentioned it briefly. it may be tempting because of the way the organization under which this study was done to dismiss it as an industry position piece and an advocacy document. it is not that, and i hope to demonstrate that to you directly in the next few moments. the second key take away is that the u.s. arctic potential is significant material in the future as paula so ably articulated to you in her comments about the children and the technology to access, to explore for and develop that u.s. offshore arctic potential exists today based on technology that's been developed and proven in other jurisdictions and then finally the key take away is what happens next and i'll close with some of the more important recommendations in the report from a technical perspective, and i'm happy to wear the cloak that heather has given me on the

technical guru on the panel and i'll focus on those and then leave drew pierce to talk about some of the other aspects that we discussed with the arctic council and our thoughts on the most appropriate actions to undertake as the u.s. transfers and assume the chairmanship of the arctic council. with that i'll make a couple of comments with regard to the team that we assembled and the collaborative process. in the slide, you can see you have 266 participants from over 105 organizations. 43% from the oil and gas industry and 30% from the federal government and here in washington and also the state of alaska and government representatives and 12% from

academic institutions, not surprising given the research and technology. we saw the need to reach out to those institutions that were directly involved in research in the arctic and ice and logistics and topics which were relevant to our report. the remainder -- the remaining 15% roughly split between alaska native representation, consultants, think tanks and the environmental community. we met, we received the secretary's request. a study committee was formed and we developed a work plan that looks kind of like the one shown on the righthand side and tested that with the secretary of energy before we undertook our work. the result itself is split into three parts and the first part is prudent development and that includes a global perspective

and global resource potential including the u.s. onshore, offshore with the focus on conventional gas and it includes interesting facts with regard to the oil industry's long history of experience in arctic and arcticlike conditions and it includes policy, history in the u.s. and it compares and contrasts u.s. arctic policy with other nations. we describe at a high level what exploration in the arctic might take and what some of the challenges and opportunities might be other than technology. that's part one. part two and three are the majority of the report. it's 550-plus page report and those are the research and technology sections. there is an engineering section

that includes four chapters, with the exploration and development technology and the logistics and the very important topic of oil spill response and then the environmental section includes ecology and the human environment. these two teams assess the current state of technology and the current state of ongoing research, assessed gaps and selected opportunities for the current administration and the department of energy to pursue. those opportunities were prioritized and the most important ones highlighted in the executive summary for consideration. a very, very collaborative report. a broad and deep team that came together to have conversations first, do analysis and then come to conclusions. we worked for more than a year. we did not start putting pen to paper on recommendations until the last two months of this study. the next topic is that i wanted you to take away is that the u.s. arctic potential is significant and the technology exists to explore for and develop it safely today and i'll develop that further in the next five minutes or so.

there are seven key findings in the report, in the executive summary. you can see them listed and summarized on this page and the order is important. it was -- this is first and foremost, a technical report and the order follows a logical, technical order. in finding one we describe the size of the oil and gas resource potential and i'll tell you more about that in a subsequent slide. in finding two we explore the arctic ecological, physical and human environment which we found was well understood after decades of research from many different institutions and organizations. in finding three, we explore the oil and gas industry's long history of successful operations in the arctic which has been enabled by continuing technology advances.

more than a century of experience that starts with the very cold-water development in norman wells in canada and then moves forward to the cook inlet in the u.s. exploration programs in the u.s. and canadian seas in the 70s and 80s and moves into the development rain beginning in the rough 1990s through to the present day. in finding four, perhaps the most important in the study or one of the most important, most of the u.s. arctic conventional oil and gas potential can be developed using existed field proven technology. of course, we recognize the technical know how is not enough in order to move forward the development must be economically viable as we discussed in finding five and we must also have public confidence that the opportunity can be pursued in a

prudent manner as paula described earlier and as we describe in the report in finding six. we recognize that we're not there in the u.s. with the public confidence. we note in the report the shared responsibility between the oil and gas industry and the government in securing and maintaining this public confidence and then finally in finding seven we outline the substantial recent technology improvements in the area of oil spill prevention and oil spill response in ice. those technology improvements have not yet been fully accepted in the u.s. which opens up the opportunity for collaborative research in the public forum as paula discussed and we see those in the recommendations which i'll show to you shortly. briefly, on resource potential, we use the u.s. geological surveys assessment and in the pie chart on the left you see the assessment and the global potential and global endowment in the arctic is 923 million barrels of oil potential and as we move to the 4:00 position we see roughly one-third is in produced and reserves entirely in u.s. and russia.

the 4:00 position starts the discovered and not yet developed and there are no development plans in the books for those resources and about 100 billion barrels and the majority look at that 51% or 426 billion barrels of undiscovered potential in the global arctic. the global arctic contains the world's largest accumulation of oil and gas hydrocarbons. so splitting that potential, that global potential by country is shown on the right. you can see by inspection that russia is by far the largest holder of that global potential, but look who is second. it's none other than the u.s. focusing on the oil potential we see the oil potential in russia and the u.s. is roughly equivalent and the u.s. has more oil potential than either canada or greenland other than norway. so this illustrates the significant resource potential in the global arctic and then in

the u.s. we discuss in the report why to pursue the arctic now and paula covered that point. in the third bullet on the slide we talk about the national security and economic benefits associated with oil and gas development in the north and for those of you that were here this morning to hear senator murkowski's remarks on the economic benefit of oil and gas development to local alaskans i don't think i can say it any better than she did, but for those of you that like numbers there's quite a lot of discussion in the report about the potential economic implications of an offshore development. i would encourage you to take a look at that. this particular display is -- illustrates the variability in arctic ice conditions around the world. there is not one arctic. in the first two columns in this table we describe arctic environment. by environment we describe of ice depth and water depth. in the first column you have a word description and in the second column we have the

examples around the world where that environment is found. the third column is the technology implications on oil and gas development. you can think of these as technology tiers. tier one being the first rough and roughly the easiest although easiest is a relative term in an area as remote as the arctic and tier 5 being the most difficult from a technology perspective. you will note immediately that there are pictures in tiers 1, 2 and 3 and no pictures in tier 4 and 5 and that's because tiers 4 and 5 have not yet been proven, not yet, i always say. i'm in the research business and that's what we're working on now. the other item i would point out to you is the red text illustrates where the u.s. potential is located and the majority of the u.s. potential, 90% of undiscovered potential is assessed to be in the buford in

less than 100 meters of water depth and you can see the photos in tier 3 you can see exploration technology which was demonstrated in the '70s in the canadian and u.s. overseas and they were in the 2000s and in the '90s and 2000s and finally with well control and technology improvements, there's been significant improvement post the macondo tragedy and also by the regulators. this particular display we call the bow tie for obvious reasons. at the center of the bow is a loss of containment event and on the left hand side are all of the prevention technologies available to eliminate and reduce the risk of a well containment event occurring in the first place and usually these topics, oil spill prevention and oil spill response are separated and the prevention side is the

engineering domain and the response side tends to be an environmental domain. in our report we brought those together because it's the industries objective and the objective of stakeholders to prevent them from taking place industry's objective and the objective of all stake holders to prevent these terrible incidents from taking place in the first place. i will direct your attention to the picture of the capping stack and seabed emergency device. these are the new technologies that i mentioned that have been recently developed and we seed the need for additional collaborative research to validate these technologies and adopt them for full use in the u.s. >> finally with regard to what comes next i have highlighted as promised on this chart the key recommendations coming out of the report, the key technical recommendations. we have grouped the recommendations into three

themes. environmental, stewardship economic viability and government policy coordination. these are the three pillars, if you will of what's necessary to move forward with the development. the first two listed are in the environmental stewardship theme. the first is that industry and regulators should work together to analyze these new technologies for well control. the second speaks to oil spill response and there is an industry collaborative research project that has been underway since 2012 that has been evaluating response technologies developed in temperate climates to see how they will perform in the arctic and we recommend that government agencies join that collaborative. there are eight international companies participating. in the area of economic viability, we make two recommendations. the first is around extending

the drilling season. the picture at the left illustrates the challenge. currently the exploration drilling season is conducted in the winter -- or in the summer when the water is open and ice free. that's about 110 days. however the current practice is to restrict the back end of that season from exploration drilling for same season relief well. that reduces the season to about 79 days. in order to drill an exploration drill to target you need about 80 days to progress it if you have a dry hole. if you have a test to do you need more time. this is requiring two mobilizations for every exploration well. what is possible with some of these technologies that have been used and demonstrated in other jurisdictions and in the 70s and 80s in the u.s. is to roughly double that season. so it would make it possible to drill an exploration well in a single season with a single mobilization, taking the cost of

exploration drilling almost in half and significantly reducing the risk. the second economic issue is lease terms. you can see that the u.s. is different than other nations in terms of the lease being a development lease system. other nations have the challenge. when you can only work two to three months out of the season. and they recognize this and they break the lease into a couple of bites. the first bitd is an exploration lease where, for example, in can canada, if you have a discovery, you go into a process of converting that license. and then you allow more time to advance your development. i would be pleased and look

forward to your questions. thank you very much. >> that was just super. >> we have copies of the report. a really tremendous amount of information is there. i turn to -- >> she has to pass me. >> you have the keyboard, ma'am. please. >> thank you. our fancy technology here is passing down the row. all right, ms. pierce the floor is yours. >> thank you very much. thank you to all of you for being here today. i am going to talk about three things very brief lyly have the public's confidence. but what we alaskians brought to the table is the fact for this study, for it to have any

credence in alaska it had to have alaskans' confidence so lots of residents got to take part and i was very pleased with the outcome. i'm going to talk briefly about one of the recommendations related to the arctic council and i'm going to talk about the arctic economic council that you heard the senator speak about earlier. the senator told you to remember those four million people who live in the arctic. i was pleased to sit on. but also with dozens of alaskans who worked on coordinating the sub committee and also on the different chapter teams. they brought their passion to the table. henry huntington and mark myers, many, many scientists at the university of alaska,

particularly in fair banks and also throughout the state we had a workshop where we brought in native leaders tribal leaders corporation leaders we had elders whalers, and more. the person who made sure that we kept on the right track and remembered those people who lived in the arctic each time we met was my friend richard glen. just to give you an idea of all the different hats that those four million people wear not everyone wears all of these hats, but richard is the executive vice president for lands and minerals for arctic regional corporation. he is a scientist a father, a whaling crew co-captain and a rock and roll band member.

he spoke to us a lot. we talked a lot about balance so i put a quote here and i am going read it to you. he said the study was all about balance. balance between conservation and resource development. balance between traditional knowledge and what we call traditional science and engineering. the arctic is our home. we aren't going anywhere. he talked to us many times as did some of the elders about the fact that the tribes have been adapting to changing climates and infusion of new technology for thousands of years. they haven't left and they aren't going to leave. another quote. if development comes we want to share in the benefits while working to mitigate any plans. do we get passionate about it? you bet we do. and all the alaskans at the

tablewet working on the chapters brought their passion to the table. we brought it back home to alaska time and time again and we insisted upon a focus on traditional knowledge, we insisted upon a focus on the benefits for alaska, and i have to say that the ladies to my left were extremely patient with all of the alaskans. so there is a recommendation in the executive summary and in this study. it was asked in a letter about the role during the council chairmanship. the u.s. government should seek to strengthen the formal council agency as well as to promote its business advisory role. you heard the senator speak

about the arctic economic council this morning but a lot of people still are not that familiar. it was created at the direction of the ministers during the canadian chairmanmanship and under the leadership of the she represents the first time that a permanent participant has been chair. their innaug y'all meeting was last year in canada. the purpose is to facilitate arctic business to business activities and responsible economic development. there are 42 voting members. that means there are three from each member nation and three from each of the arctic indigenous organization.

there is a former executive committee and that will always include at least one permanent participant. this is the first time that was developed under the arctic council that the participants are fully at the table with a vote. alaska is lucky because we have business representatives from alaska. one from the icc, that's the largest single voting delegation. on tuesday of this week, the state department held a virtual stake holder outreach forum and julie presented to many, many

people, many alaskans in particular a and certainly the state department wants the input. the first bullet is harnessing the expertise and resources of the arctic economic council to inform the council's work to improv economic and living conditions in the region. now, i actually have some insider knowledge i have reason to believe that when the group gets to ottawa next thursday where they're having their second face to face meeting that that they will choose to adopt a rotating chairmanmanship. i also have reason to believe that the u.s. will be the second chair after canada, the chair at

the moment of this new arctic economic council and i also have reason to believe that the business rep for the polar conference alaska will be who sits on the executive committee presently will be the chair during the u.s. chairmanship. they meet monthly and talk about what they hope they can bring forward to a larger arctic economic council but they are bringing a number of proposed themes to the table next week i suspect because these fit so closely into the terms of reference for the economic council itself that these will be adopted.

exchange between the industry and ak deem ya. strong connections between arctic states and traditional indigenous knowledge stewardship and a focus on small businesses and in deed on indigenous owned businesses. the senator you heard say she wants the aec to go on the road. i believe that certainly the alaskan members will be having willing to do so in the united states and will encourage the business reps from the other countries to do the same. just so you know the aec alaska folks bring that same passion to the table that we had during the study. so we will be very well represented. thank you. >> we always encourage insider information so thank you very

much. that really highlights what we will see next week. just sort of my very brief reflections and being part of this incredible process my co-conspirator, the senior vice president here the people, the numbers, the meetings. it was extraordinary and you talk about passion. for me it was so helpful to understand the private sector. the technology, i could never understand the technology but to have an appreciation for it.

so it was an incredible learning experience. and i think some great colleagues were formed, and i think we're going to continue this conversation well after this study. i have to say again, reflections for the peanut gallery. the department of energy requested this study. but in some ways, this runs into what senator murkowski mentioned. sometimes the biggest challenge is us and the inner agency process. because a lot of the conversation is part of the study was really about the department of interior. the department of interior was in these processes and was very engaged, but they didn't request the study. this was about the department of energy trying to understand its emerging role in the arctic. but it was -- it was a part of the process that i think was very interesting. it was to see and to witness and have everyone experience it, as

well as getting the critical voice from alaska. again, we in the washington policy communities get so focused on our inner agency fights and our regulation and who is doing what, and we've always been returned to what's important, and that's the people. and i was so grateful. again, for my two cents, i think the larger question this study raises, it doesn't come out, but this is my takeaway from it. does the united states want to develop the offshore arctic resources. do we or don't we? that's not an easy question to answer. and there are a lot of questions about economic viability. there are a lot of questions about are we ready.

do we have sufficient infrastructure, search and rescue, oil and spill prevention capabilities, do we have what is necessary. and as we've all been watching shell's journey, some may argue it's an odyssey of their efforts to do this, we've learned a lot through that process. but increasingly we're understanding, and i'm so grateful you talked about the arctic economic council. when the state department first briefed their chairmanship agenda, i assure you it was not at the the top of the economic issue. they heard in stereo around the circumpolar arctic, that economic development had to be part of the conversation, and there was some reluctance. but i think we need to recognize they heard it. and they're responding. and so this is important. these voices matter, and we all have a piece of the conversation, and it takes the 200 plus people that came around the table through the vehicle of the national petroleum council study to say we've got a lot of work to do. so again, sort of from the observation tower of this

process, it was incredible. it was incredible amount of work. and i can't tell you, paul and carol had killed themselves the last 12 months, to shepherd this motley group and get to a really incredible product. so i want to thank you so much. so now i get to turn to some questions, and this is where i get to play tough questioner here. as much as you can share, sort of the challenge of the interagency process here. dewey has a strong role in this, but not the total role, and right before the study was completed, we had the department of interior propose some new guidelines, some new regulations, and that sort of entered in at the end of it. what's your perspective on the inner agency dynamic and your cooperative relationship with the department interior as you work on these issues? >> thanks, heather. we have an incredibly robust, as many of you are aware, inner agency dialogue, but also an incredible amount of collaboration. particularly with the office of oil and gas at doe, and the department of interior, various agencies, for example, in the

aftermath of the deep water horizon event. many of the learnings that have been taken up, have been developed in collaboration with our office, as well as the research partnership for secure energy america, which involves about 140 companies and technology firms. likewise, we have, as directed by the president's blueprint for secure energy future, which calls for an all of the above energy strategy, we have a multiagency strategy for understanding and working to develop the science to mitigate the impacts of unconventional

oil and natural gas production, and this is with our office and usgs and epa and like wise you usgs and epa and likewise you see the l recommendations that are pointed to doe. and this report really points back to that role for the arctic as well. in one way, the way i think about the work of our office, is we're the office of science for federal and state regulators. we were in alaska last week, and i can tell you state regulators in alaska are very much focused on these questions and understanding what the science says in an unbiased and neutral manner about this activity can proceed. and those are the same questions that our partners are asking at other federal agencies, and we're the office that they turned to understand what the center of the science understands. and it's a vital role that government research plays and providing policymakers with an unbiased view of science, technology, and its performance. so that we can move forward in these areas. so there's a very robust collaboration between our office and other agencies, and the recommendations here provide us sort of a road map forwards on what we should be looking at next in the area of science and technology. >> carol, what surprised you the most about this study? you went into this, and i think, if i may tell my little tale out of school.

i think carol was surprised at the world of washington policy sausage making. a canadian herself, she was looking at this going, why do you do that? well, why does that happen? i love that. because it was hard to explain why. but what took you by surprise the most about the study? >> oh my gosh. it's hard to pick one thing. i guess what i would say -- i mean, you hit on it, heather, we just learned -- those of us in the industry just learned a lot about the history of our arctic policy and also about the challenges in integrating the many different -- the many different aspects of arctic

policy that are important to all stakeholders. i would say when we came together to undertake this question, each of us probably came to the table with our own perspective of what was most perspective of what was mostly each of us from our own corners of the room, so to speak, were thinking of this, heather, pretty simply, and as we conducted the dialogue over those many months, the scope of the problem started small and got bigger, and then we tried to synthesize and bring it together in a meaningful way. and so, i mean, i just learn sod much in terms of the importance of listening fully and not letting your own biases stop you from hearing what someone else was trying to say. i learned that the exxon mobile project management culture sometimes clashes with the very focused on schedule and execution. sometimes clashes with the fulsome debate, and question

learn to tolerate the strengths each of us brought to the team. but what i would say is we started out the journey together with people saying hello, i'm paula from the department of energy and i'm caroline from exxon mobil and on the way we moved from being individuals representing our respective interests and we became a team that was about trying to really understand the secretary's question and understand the broader context behind his question. so i'm very pleased with what we delivered. if i look back on what helped us be successful, others will judge if they think it was successful or not. two critical success factors, was one establishing a transparent schedule, which we agreed with the secretary early on. the second was the selection of the right team at the coordinating sub committee. leaders like are in the room with us today and sitting at this table with me. i'm just incredibly grateful for everyone's support and the opportunity. >> thanks so much, i'm going to ask you a question. i would have loved to ask

senator murkowski, and we ran out of time. from the state perspective and your legislative career, the alaskan state economy has really been battered. on the one hand, we can celebrate low energy prices, boy, the budget has taken a hit. this is -- i -- this is an urgency in alaskan voices about their future economic growth model and concerns senator murkowski expressed as production declines, needing to find new opportunities, having legislation is white house pulling offshore, onshore land away from exploration. what's the mood? what's the sense. and tell us, because what's going to be interesting, the next two year there is will be a

lot of meetings with the arctic council. they're all going to be in alaska. they're going to hear an alaskan perspective on this. and i would like you to preview that perspective. >> well, it will be loud. you know, the legislature is supposed to adjourn under statutory requirements sunday night at midnight. and i'm not sure they're going to get out of town on time. one of the things that is battering us in particular at the moment is the fact that is down so low at this point, running around 500,000 barrels a day from the original 2 million barrels a day. in the past, including when i was chairing the senate finance committee and oil dropped to

$9.50 a barrel, even though the state budget depends over 90% on the revenues that we get from our oil and gas resources, and from the production of those resources, we were able to get through the times of really low oil prices because we had a robust -- in taps frankly. we've seen production come back up. that's excellent. but that continued drop in taps is really battering the budget, and will continue to for the future until we can figure out a way to get more oil into what is not just an alaska important infrastructure, but it's a national energy security infrastructure that needs to be protected for the nation's benefit, not just for alaskans. the mood is somber, but alaskans are resilient. goodness knows so many alaskans have, as i've said, they've been there for thousands of years and they've been adapting for that entire time. so there's a resiliency.

but there's also -- i would say a hopefulness that together alaskans can come through, make some changes to our base budget, but also see opportunities in the future that will help provide continued jobs for alaskans and for our children and grandchildren, but also support the budget. it's never bad to look at budgets and see where there may be some bloat. and that is happening. but the legislature and the governor will be careful not to try to go too deep. the former lieutenant governor is smiling at me. >> i sense mead may have a question when we turn to the audience. infrastructure is exactly where i want to go. but carol, because the report did have a reflection on infrastructure, if you could just share a brief thought on that. and paula, you have been

focusing on transportation and infrastructure, now that's obviously from shale gas and i would love your reflections on this. infrastructure and national pry orization. >> so we do have on entire chapter in the report dedicated to logistics and infrastructure and recognize it's a significant challenge to progressing with the development in the alaskan argument. -- arctic. with regard to exploration, the infrastructure needs are much lower, as the industry moves forward -- as shell moves guard with their plans, they will be bringing all the required equipment with them in order to safely and responsibly execute the program. including the oil spill response vessels and support that they are required to bring by permit. with regard to the longer infrastructure needs, the report does a very good job of cataloging the current state of infrastructure. what's available today, what the gaps and opportunities are, and then make some recommendations to move forward. probably the most important one is that we see merit in continued emphasis on joint scenario planning, including the federal government, the state

government, the local communities, probably most importantly and they likely would be in the best position to lead such an activity. the oil and gas industry, but also fisheries, tourism, et cetera, infrastructure, is a shared resource, so a joint scenario plan could potentially open up the opportunity for partnerships in particular areas between governments and industry, public and private partnerships as the senator was talking about earlier. >> sure, thanks, heather. in here in the lower 48, we talk about the revolution and the knowledge that we have great rocks and that comes in really handy. and the other reason we're the envy of the world is we have an incredibly robust delivery. and we have 2.4 million miles of gas pipeline alone. nowhere else in the world would you find infrastructure so prevalent.

so with this in mind, the president has commissioned the review that will be released very shortly, and the first year is focused on delivery infrastructure. and understanding what our needs are going forward in an integrated manner, and as that begins to roll out soon, you'll see, i think a key learning from that is that energy infrastructure, the infrastructure that secures our energy is not just pipes and tankers. it is ports, roads, bridges. it is all part of what underpins our economy, whether here in the lower 48 or alaska. and you see incredible focus in the the senator's remarks this morning, as well as in our visit to alaska, a tremendous -- i mean, there was a great deal of priority and debate being focused on a natural gas pipeline, for example, in alaska as well as the future of taps and how to ensure it. and it goes hand in hand to develop the resource and the knowledge you can move the

resource to markets where it's valued. whether in alaska and in other places. so this all combined with the changing nature of the climate and new challenges that we are seeing of the impacts of climate change on coastal communities and ports as well as roads. whether they're traditional roads or ice roads and new challenges with being able to build and maintain them, as well as t pipeline infrastructure. this is something i think we're going to be discussing quite robustly over the coming years because there are tremendous investments that we need to make. onshore as well as offshore, and thinking about data and communications as well as in securing maritime shipping lanes.

and the port support that would provide for spill response, for example. this is the age of infrastructure. and we should all be very focused on thinking of the ways we can support the development, because this is the underpinning for our economic and energy security. >> well said. it's time for the audience to engage in the discussion, if you have any questions or comments, please raise your hand and give us your name and affiliation. if you're too shy, mead, i'm going to put you right on the spot. so i think i will put mead treadwell right on the spot. i'll introduce you so you don't have to, mead.

>> thanks, heather. my affiliation is heather and i are working on bringing investment to the arctic, and pleased to be here today. and thank you for your report. i'm sorry i missed your presentations on alaska last week. as former chair of the research commission, i can tell you one of our last meetings as chair was at the white house just about the time the spill was happening. we had come up with suggestions on how the u.s. could better structure its support for oil and gas, or oil spill research. what did you find as you looked at both the public/private partnership that's happening in norway on oil and ice recovery, and what should we be doing specifically to meet the goal where you saw deficiency here in this report? >> thanks for the question. oil spill prevention and response is the top topic on the

mind of all stakeholders. and you know, i mentioned in our recommendation that we really want and need to see the department of interior specifically join with the industry in collaborating in this important area. i like the example that you cited in norway. for two reasons. the first is bessie has spent a lot of money in the area of oil spill in the arctic and they have a lot to bring to the table. they have a lot of expertise. and the second is they are importantly independent of the industry. it's not enough for the industry to say that this particular response performed this way. we really need that independent view. what we think needs to happen is for the department of interior to join that group, bring their research to the table. we need to move forward with field tests in our arctic conditions. some of those have been advanced in other countries. but getting permits to do a field test of an oil spill response exercise is particularly difficult because

no one wants to champion that. so we also see a need to move forward with permits necessary in that regard. there are discussions about building a specialized facility to test oil spill response off the east coast of canada in newfoundland. those are a couple of thoughts about what can be done in that very important area. >> just quickly, d.o.e. has focused our research to a great extent on prevention of loss of control. we do a lot of work on integrity, understanding how your cement performs at pressure and depth. understanding the ocean currents and the stresses that puts on risers and translating that to our work on basic material science to understand what the risers are made of, for example. there's also, i think in the study, some recommendations that we'll be considering next. so we've been focused on the front end of the bow tie, if you will. but there's also opportunities

on the right side as carol set out for us to with the department of interior to demonstrate the effectiveness of some of the technologies that are available to prevent or deal with loss of control of oil. so while to date we've been focused on preventing that. your best way to prevent an oil spill is to design your well really well and never lose control of it to begin with. but if you do, there have emerged an array of technologies to deal with it. and what we need to do is make sure that we're demonstrating and testing those ways in ways that people have confidence in. that's what we'll be looking at in d.o.e., how we can participate in that through our national apps.

>> one of the things that i learned and those of us who worked on the study who were neither industry and/or federal government is that there's not as much collaboration as we might expect or think or just thought was happening. for example, industry has an arctic joint industry project for slow response technology that the u.s. government is not party to. why? i was surprised by that. that bessie and others had not actually joined. so we saw lots of opportunities. and i think i came away with the belief there needs to be better

understanding by everyone of all the work that is being done, and all the work that has been done, and the technology that is out there, and whether we're practicing it and whether we're exercising it as well as we should is a different question. particularly in the u.s. where it's hard to get a permit to do a spill exercise. but there's kind of a step two, which is education, which is something that csis and other institutions like that might want to focus on. how do we get the word out there? what truly is happening. i would also say it provides an opportunity for the public/private partnerships that we're talking about. it's not just industry and the government. there are private companies around the world that are working on spill technology every day and have some really bright minds working on it. so there are real opportunities, and we should push forward to make those work for us. >> i'll add my two cents. the arctic council is the international perspective here. they have been working on oil spill prevention. and i think they will be presenting a framework for that. but it's going to be u.s. chairmanship that's going to have to work the issue. i think in some ways, the arctic council, it does such amazing work. great assessments. marine shipping investment and then fabulous recommendations. and then okay. who makes sure the national government is really focused, really implements and bring those to fruition? this is going to be challenge

for the u.s. i think the arctic economic council will have a big focus on energy and those implications. again, we're developing these good tools. we need the collaboration. >> and just one final point. dr. mike myers, who when we began the study as the university in charge of research. and when we ended the study is now the commissioner for the state told us time and time again that everybody can do all of their research at the university of alaska fairbanks where they're actually building facilities for this type of research. so once again, bringing it home. >> you had a quick follow-up, and then i'll let others get in here. yes, sir. we're start with you. we'll get a microphone. >> no, no, here. yeah, yeah. >> my point about structure. >> just get a microphone. >> the oil pollution act of 1990 created an interagency committee on coordinating oil police and research. as we founded it, we called it

the intergalactic. but i would really urge industry to play a much larger role in that committee. i would urge d.o.e. to play a much larger role on that committee. understand the work of the coast guard because they have the internal work. if state of alaska has put money toward the joint program. there is a way that we can come together. i find the issue with oil spills is people who want to go ahead and drill want to pretend they don't happen. they can happen. we know they can happen, and we have to constantly be pushing that edge forward. that committee needs greater attention to the white house, and it needs greater participation by the federal agencies. >> one of the key findings was to secure public confidence in the development of oil and gas. and senator murkowski was touching upon the aspect of, you know, residents in the arctic

being -- want to see development, while those outside, you know, want to preserve it. how do you address that giving the observation from many of the environmental ngos? >> well, i just want to point out one of the difficulties of trying to address it. so, clearly you need public acceptance to move forward. but if you look at the accidents that have happened in terms of oil and gas-related industry in alaska and around the world, you'll find most of those are related to transportation, not to exploration phase and not to development phase. however, when you look at the new bessie arctic that came out last month, arguably because of the time lines that are written

into, it pushes exploration rigs into a two-season event. rather than being able to go in, drill your well and actually do your testing in one year and then get out. if the real risk is during the the transportation phase, it does not make sense to push into two years where you have to stage twice. up and back and up and back. because you have more ships in the water and more opportunity to have a transportation accident. so i think that what we need is a dialogue to understand what are the real risks, and what are the opportunities? and then we all have to accept that your risk is never going to

be zero. just as mead said. we don't live in a zero-risk world. >> henry hedger, retired government researchers. perhaps you heard of botley plants for fresh water in finland where they use icebergs. the arctic has that tremendous amount of ice, and of course with the the climate change, they indicate it will melt. once it's melted, it's no longer serviceable. it becomes salt water in the ocean. the fresh water is a great resource, and botling plants would be needed, say in alaska. one of our own areas, let alone canada. if they can reduce the amount of ice that's fresh or well and good, then less of a problem with the rising sea level. also job creation. thousands of jobs could be created. and not just bottles of water, but barrels of water could be shipped to areas of great concern like california, and you would have fresh water. do you have any comment? >> oh my goodness. drew? go for it. >> you know, there was just an article in the anchorage paper, maybe yesterday, that fresh water shipments are starting out of alaska to the lower 48.

now that's not arctic water, but it's water. it's fresh water. so all the the way back to government hickle, but governor hickle had the dream of bringing alaska's fresh water resources south. various entities have picked up on that and have actually licensed some opportunities. i think you will see people move forward, and looking at the water resources that we have in alaska as being a very important resource to the state. we're seeing that right now as kind of a fledgling industry in alaska. >> hi. john farrell, arctic research commission. i have a question for dr. gant. i was curious why secretary money commissioned this study.

he will receive this report, and he will provide a response to the report, the recommendations in the report. is there anything at this point you can foreshadow as to what he might say in receiving the report and how he may consider the recommendations and begin to act on them? >> john, you know, i like my job and i would like to keep it. i'm not going to be so bold as to suggest what the secretary might say. i can tell you that he and the deputy secretary were very pleased with the quality of this report. it's 550 pages of a lot of great science consolidated there. and we expect it will be a great resource for people as they come to the arctic. particularly those like me that know a lot less about it than you do, john. with regard to -- there are a number of recommendations that

relate directly to d.o.e. and where we might pursue science and research. and almost all of those -- not only do they speak to our core mission and our core capabilities. but they are also implicitly represent our collaboration with other agencies, as well as our work and the work that the commission has going on as well. so as the secretary considers these recommendations and next steps, we will be working with our inner agency partners and other federal partners that were involved in the study efforts and recommendations to understand not only which piece of these recommendations seem --

because we can't do everything at once -- the most imperative in priority from a time perspective, but which should be done through vehicles like our national labs. which should be done in direct partnerships with other agencies. which should be done through the arctic research council, our other agencies, or through partnerships at the state level. as drew mentioned, the university of alaska fairbanks has tremendous capabilities in this area and they're already a great partner for us. so we'll be looking for input as we move forward. and i'll let the secretary speak for himself when he does. thanks for the question. >> i would like to make a comment. i really appreciate the question as well. we want the report to be read and have impact. but i want to integrate that question with the question we had over here on how to navigate the complex question that the senator laid out for us. should we progress with development, and how do we balance that with concern for the changing climate. i think the answer is in a debate that's rooted in science and research.

not the sound bites that come across on twitter. not the statistics that are short quotes without the technical data to back up what they mean. you know, you could -- you could identify -- in our report we say the risk of a well controlled event in the arctic with new technology is extremely remote. how do i reconcile that with a quote that says the risk of an oil spill is 70%? the risk of an oil spill this summer is not 70%. the data behind that calculation is that risk is over the next 70 years. penal don't say that on twitter. but what we really need to do is get the scientific community together. john's organization, the industry experts, paula's team together to explore the findings in this report. do you agree with them? if not, what more science and

technology is needed in order to move forward? and as paula outlined in her opening questions, only then can we have good science, good research, inform good policy. and that's how i think we can find some middle ground between these very polarized opinions a and move beyond them being someone's personal opinion. >> well, unfortunately the time is close. i'm going to have to cut it off here. but as you can tell, what a privilege it was to be a part of the team of such thoughtful people trying to wrestle with extremely tough, complex questions. and we know the stakes are enormous. i think when you showed richard glenn's quote, we need a little rock 'n' roll concert. we need to jazz up our conversation on the future of the development of the arctic. please join me in thanking our panelists for a great presentation. now don't go away.

we're going very quickly switch panelists and we're going to conclude with our arctic health discussion. thank you.

>> thank you all. we're beginning our last panel here today. we will run until 1:00 p.m. focus is on health. we have a great array of speakers here today. i want to first of all congratulate heather and, heather conley and carolyn roloff, colleague here at csic for the production of this report which i hope you all had a chance to get and what is available electronically online. this is a terrific and very timely piece of work that brings together, as we'll hear from heather, in one place a lot of data, a lot of analysis, a

lot -- situates it all in the context of what has been going on up to this time in engagement in the arctic on the health. what do we know and what is the possibilities here in terms of concrete additional action by the u.s. government in its chairmanship of the arctic council over the next two years which begins next week. thank you for going that. congratulations. that's terrific. senator murkowski this morning in here speech made a powerful

point. and that is all action by the u.s. government and all other governments in the arctic need to put the human reality, the individual and the community at the center stage in discussing the future and in discussing the approaches that are going to be taken. i think this gives us a wide open door for talking about these issues and where we are going to go. the way we're going to do our business today, we're going to ask heather to give us a quick synopsis of the report and what it contains. then we're going to move in sequence. we're going to have pamela collins, who is a psychiatrist an m.d., director of the office for research on disparities and global mental health at the national institute of mental health, pamela came to us, we've known each other a little bit over the years. roger glass, who is with us today, roger, thank you for joining us. roger kindly connected us. thank you for coming and being with us. pamela will role through eight or ten minutes of presentation on the work that nimh is leading in this area. we will then move to dr. michael bruce, based in anchorage. thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. he will walk through the cdc program in some detail as well.

we're using this really as an occasion for getting these two lead u.s. agencies to tell us what they do, tell us what the major challenges and issue focus will be and what the future might look like in terms of continued work, intensified efforts in this area. dr. bruce is the epidemiology health leader and has put predominant focus on a wide range of research and studies across vaccine preventable diseases, health disparities, chronic disorders. so we're thrilled that miking is with us. our fourth speaker is dr. tim think, who is a research professor at george washington university and a leading polar expert. a migration expert and demographer who has been working on polar geography and polar

environments for his entire career. he's one of the contributing author to the newly complete and newly issued about a month ago arctic human development report which some of you i hope have had a chance to look at. ten year study. builds on the 2004 study. comes out. it's full of enormous amount of insight and detail. and we were very fortunate through heather's intervention to enlist timothy to come down and be here with us today. so thank you for making the journey to be here with us. once we roll through the presentations, we'll have a bit of a conversation amongst ourselves. but we're going to move to you all very rapidly to get your opinions and comments. so please be ready for that. and heather, the floor is yours. >> thank you so much, steve. and it is wonderful to be table to have such a great partner. steve and i, our offices are

right beside each other, and i'll tell you how this idea came about. we were talking, and i had sort of gotten the nickname at the office the polar princess, the arctic queen because i do so much on the arctic. he said we should do something together. we should collaborate together, having the health program be a part of the conversation. funny you should ask. health is not an issue in the policy space that we focus on as much. we know the u.s. chairmanship, one of the mayor themes is the economic and the livelihoods of people in the north, a focus on that. and we really need to pull this information together. what do we know? what is the united states doing about it? and then, i said, of course, the timing is perfect because we know the arctic human development report, which first issued in 2004, so, as it was issued, it was a 2014 report that was issued a little bit later in february of 2015. we'd have ten years to see what has changed. where is the focus that we need to do? so all of these elements came together, and really encouraged

us to put this report together. so many thanks to the global health program for being part of that. and of course my colleague caroline roloff was absolutely instrumental in developing this report as well. you're so sick of hearing from me today. i'm going to be extremely brief, and i really want to hear from our panelists. this is part of -- i'm going to take my notes and be copious. i'm going to learn a lot here too. but i just want to do a couple of highlights in the report. i think the first thing that strikes me, i think it strikes anyone that doesn't know this topic and begins to read it is the huge challenge of mental health and suicide prevention. a recent -- this comes from our report. a recent study has found that every five suicide rates increase by 18%. now just to bring this home closer for the state of alaska, an alaskan natives, the rates of suicide increased 500% since 1960 with rates four times higher among 10 to 19-year-old alaskan natives than their nonnative peers.

this is striking. and it certainly is a huge crisis. there's a whole issue of mental health challenges that are profound. we hope this study reinforces the urgency. there's other pressing issues that just require continued focus. the change in food habits, increased rates in diabetes, heightened impact on the food security of environmental contaminants. some of this things are from the changes in the climates but as the food cycle so dramatically changes.

but the arctic picture is a close one. there is no one model. you have a different health spectrum in the market where the it's more different in other communities. so the challenge for the arctic council as it's developing its thinking is how -- there's not one size meets all. but how do you meet the needs, bring the studying with the information the focus together. there's lots of information in the report. welcome you to read it. i want to conclude by highlights some recommendations. i am a proponent of really thinking the arctic council's government structure in light of its 20th birthday. it was designed in 1996 for one purpose. as we've just talked about over

the last couple 0f hours, so much as changed. do we have the right alignment in our working groups? do we have the right alignment that the arctic council should think about having a working group designated for arctic health and well-being. if people are at the center of this policy, which they are, we have a flora and fauna working group. we have the protection for the arctic marine environment. i would like to see a very focused working group on health. if we think it's important, we put it out there. so as i said, i no that will -- that's a pretty provocative recommendation but we think it's the one thing that could perhaps be a legacy for the u.s. chairmanship and moving forward. the second linkage, as you heard from senator murkowski through our discussion on energy resource development, what we really found in our report,

there is a link between economic development and growth and mental wellness and well-being. maybe we should be a little bit more specific about that linkage where people have livelihood, their living standards are increasing. can we make that linkage? can the arctic economic council have a direct role in how the private sector, public private partnerships are engaging in some of these pressing health issues for arctic communities? and of course, as part of all of this is how do we engage traditional knowledge in working towards an improved arctic health and well-being picture? i think again, the working group, a new working group could bring that traditional knowledge in. we have other recommendations, obviously, it is our hope that the u.s. chairmanship focuses like a laser beam on these issues. we know mental health suicide prevention is part of it and i

know our colleagues will give us great insights on what the work of their agencies are doing. we want to raise this up and highlight it and certainly want to impress upon policy makers that this is a critical issue that demands our full attention. senator murkowski talked about the young people and their enthusiasm. we can't have arctic young people not seeing a promising future and committing suicide. with that steve, thank you so much. >> thank you. pamela? >> thank you and thank you for the introduction. it's a pleasure to be here. the many opportunities and challenges we've heard discussed this morning, i'll focus in on one of those, which is the area of suicide and suicide prevention. just to orient all of you, this graph -- i'm pressing the wrong one. this graph shows you some data on suicide rates in the united states over the last 20 years. the red line shows you homicide rates in the united states,

which you can see have dropped substantially. suicide rates have increased by 17% from 2002 to 2012. and in 2013 there were about 41,000 suicides in the u.s. and to give you a sense of when we're talking about the circumpolar communities, where do we stand? the bottom red arrow shows the u.s. suicide rate in comparison to other countries and subcommittees in the arctic. the top red arrow shows you the suicide rate in alaska. one of the main takeaways from this point is first of all to orient you, the yellow bars represent nordic communities and regions and nordic countries and regions. the green represents greenland. which you can see at the very top. the blue represents russia and regions in russia. and the red is north america and regions. so the -- as i mentioned the

bottom red bar is the united states suicide rate. the top the red bar by the other red arrow is alaska. so clearly rates in alaska are higher than the u.s. population in general. and if you -- what you can also note from the slide is is that as you go higher, the bars that are the higher rates often represents indijen nous communities, there's variation within countries with indigenous groups often at a much higher rate -- risk for suicide. these are data from alaska specifically. and again, because -- to orient you to what the lines are, the bottom line in yellow shows nonnative alaskans and these are females. nonnative female suicide rate. the next line that jagged one, are alaska native females. and then above them the brown line, nonnative males in alaska. and that top line represents

alaska native young men and men. again, huge differences by ethnicity with -- and certainty regional variation within alaska too where there are certain communities in alaska that have higher suicide rates than others. this is a complex problem, not performed everywhere, but clearly this group of men and young men in particular are the group that are at the highest risk among alaskan natives. the conversations about --. thank you. the conversations about suicide prevention in the united states are happening at an opportune time. the u.s. just published this prioritized research agenda for suicide prevention in 2014. with an ambitious goal of seeing that suicide could be reduced by 20% in the u.s. over the next five years, should the research and result in policy

and services interventions be implemented. and an ambitious goal of seeing a 40% reduction over the next ten years in the united states. again, given that we can implement what we knee needs to happen. at the same time the w.h.o. published earlier in 2014 its world suicide report. also setting ambitious targets and looking at what are the regional differences around the world and what can we learn as a global community to address suicide. and i just want to highlight a couple of cost cutting things in the u.s. -- the u.s. research agenda that are relevant, i think, to arctic countries. one is a positive approach, testing approaches that actually initiate and maintain healthy behaviors that can lead to reduction in risk. testing interventions aimed at reducing risk factors but using technology to figure out how to facilitate social connections and health seeking.

using practical studies practical trials to determine the benefits of quality improvement in health care systems. so recognizing that these interventions need to happen in the context of quality mental health service delivery and quality health care delivery. and finally, recognizing that these are interventions that need to take place intersecterally. so other systems that are responsible for health including housing, justice, education, et cetera. i spent some days a few weeks ago, in the canadian institutes of health research sponsored a meeting of report out on the mental wellness project that they did underneath the canadian chairmanship. and it was a great discussion. the canadians sponsored a couple of teams to do an environmental scan of available interventions that are being implemented in

communities and communities find promising, particularly looking to see what is it that indigenous communities in the circumpolar arctic find most important and what do they consider practice -- what do they consider promising interventions. they also looked to see what were the evidence based interventions. and some of the lessons that came from this conversation were that solutions need to be cultural grounded. they need to be community based and community driven. there was a lot of discussion to realize this was not a one size fit's all, these need to be adapted for context. what's the importance of culturally appropriate shared interventions across communities? so how can one learn from simply implementing the mental health services that are needed for example? how can we learn from

intersectoral cooperation that would benefit multiple communities? another take away was that the solution studies of these problems need to be solution focused instead of problem focused. so, again, how do we focus on health, how do we focus on strengthening health, even while we're trying to reduce risk and trying to reduce bad outcomes. communities, clinicians governments, and others need to know what works in order to know what to implement more widely. and a number of questions arose. how do we do that? how do we make sure that communities -- how do we know how communities define what works? that's not always the same as the way researchers define what works. how do decisionmakers define what works and where do these different perspectives actually intersect? and finally as i mentioned, they noted that there were few studies of interventions with rigorous evaluations. opportunities that we see from the u.s. perspective for building on the canadian activities, first of all, acknowledging that these kinds

of challenging problems need shared knowledge and tailored efforts. but when we're tailoring interventions, how can we be sure that others are learning from those interventions? and if your interventions are successful, what's required for implementation? and once an intervention is implemented, how can one ensure that the intervention can be sustained? so how can the results of successful interventions be communicated to decisionmakers to aid sustainability? and one answer may come in how we approach testing the efficacy of these interventions and that includes figuring out how can we harmonize outcome measures to provide a shared language to communicate to different stakeholders. an important issue arose in the conversations and that is that if we want to think about