Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said the Obama administration’s restrictions on oil production in her state threatens to dry up supplies that could flow through the trans-Alaska pipeline. President Barack Obama has proposed declaring 12 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness, limiting offshore leasing in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas and block drilling in some portions of the National Petroleum Reserve. Those steps, announced Jan. 25, put much of the state off limits to new oil production, Murkowski said Tuesday. “The actions of this administration seem destined to shut down our trans-Alaska pipeline, weaken our economy, forcing our state to make steep budget cuts and really violating the promises that were made to us at statehood and since then,” Murkowski told Interior Secretary Sally Jewell at a hearing on the department’s budget. “As an energy producing state, this is what we do.” Without […]