Some excerpts from Anchorage news.  Phyllis

WASHINGTON -- Shell Oil said it has no plans to leave Alaska, despite the
Obama administration's decision Thursday to postpone until at least next
year the company's exploratory drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday the White House stalled
offshore Arctic plans for a year to ensure that if companies eventually
can move forward there, they'll have the benefit of the findings from a
presidential commission. That commission has been asked to examine the
weaknesses in the national offshore plan that led to the Deepwater
Horizon explosion last month, and to recommend ways to keep such an event
from happening again.
DISAPPOINTMENT IN CONGRESS
Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, said he was disappointed with the president's
move and called Shell's plans for the Arctic "a casualty" of the April 20
tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico. Begich said his staff had worked closely
with Shell, including meeting in recent days with Salazar's deputy, Tom
Strickland.
"We have worked with them to meet the standards that the agencies have
required of them. They have moved through litigation, and most recently
at the request of the administration, increased their safety efforts in
order to reassure the administration that they were going far beyond what
was required of them," Begich said. 
As far as he understands the administration's move, though, it's a
"pause," Begich said, not an outright halt in exploration.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Committee, said she feared the administration's move
was a "backhanded way to kill offshore development in Alaska" and that
she thought Shell could have drilled safely this summer. 
"We must learn all we can from this tragedy to limit the risk of anything
like it ever happening again, but we can't simply halt all oil and gas
production offshore. Our standard of living and the nation's security
depend on domestic oil and gas production," she said.
Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, blamed the decision as being a knee-jerk
reaction to "the hysteria of interest groups that want to cripple our
country."
"The kind of event that happened in the Gulf, while tragic, is so
uncommon. It is akin to an American jetliner crashing," he said. "If a
plane goes down, we don't stop flying. We figure out what went wrong and
correct the problem." 
RELIEF ON THE NORTH SLOPE
Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell complained the federal move was "based on fear,
not sound science."
"Alaskans have experienced firsthand the ravages of an oil spill with the
Exxon Valdez in 1989," he said. "We never want to repeat that experience,
and our hearts go out to Gulf Coast residents suffering from the effects
of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. On the other hand, Shell's proposed
exploration plan in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas has been reviewed
extensively."
But environmental groups reveled in their victory and vowed 

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