Mayor of Nuiqsut tells a whopper to congressional committee — and gets caught

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Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, mayor of Nuiqsut, Alaska, compared a small subsurface gas leak at Alpine CD1 this past winter to Deepwater Horizon, the drilling rig blowout in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, which led to the largest marine oil spill in history.

After being introduced to the subcommittee by Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola, Ahtuangaruak talked about how the air in Nuiqsut was so bad during the CD1 subsurface leak in March that people in the village could not breathe and feared for their lives.

That was a whopper, since the air around the site is some of the most heavily monitored air on earth and never went out of normal range.

But the real whopper she told was when the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources asked her who wrote her testimony.

Minnesota Congressman Pete Stauber asked Ahtuangaruak she had written her own testimony. She said yes.

Watch the three-minute exchange here.

Stauber then pointed out that the document’s information panel showed it was authored by Trustees for Alaska’s Bridget Psarianos, a lawyer for the environmental litigation firm.

Ahtuangaruak said no, she had no connection with Psarianos or Trustees of Alaska. Yet, the PDF file clearly shows Psarianos as the author.

The mayor of Nuiqsut was caught in a lie to Congress on the simplest of questions — did she write her own testimony or was it authored by a group that has an active lawsuit against the Willow Project.

The subcommittee hearing was convened to discuss H.R. 8802, offered by Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee. The bill would require the secretary of the Interior and the chief of the Forest Service to align management of public lands and waters with the president’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. It’ a climate change bill, and it’s a Green New Deal bill, but had no mention of specific projects, such as Willow.

The Willow project was announced in January 2017 is in the Bear Tooth Unit in the northeast portion of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A). Estimated to produce 180,000 barrels of oil per day at its peak, the project will strengthen America’s energy security and stimulate economic growth for the entire region and Alaska. It is supported by Alaska’s entire congressional delegation and awaits a decision by the Bureau of Land Management and federal judges.

In addition to lying to Congress, Ahtuangaruak also hijacked the topic of the hearing and used her time to talk about the minor natural gas leak at CD 1, and her strong objection to the Willow oil project — both topics that were completely off-subject for the bill at hand.

36 COMMENTS

  1. Trustees For Alaska certainly miscalculated that one. Never trust a parrot to say exactly what you want it to say, at exactly the right time. Awk! Rosemary wanna cracker!

  2. Probably a Democrat and it’s okay to lie to congress. If your not a democrap…well that’s different rules and they must be followed.

  3. In my opinion the development of the Willow Field is crucial for Alaska’s future. Somehow we need to find a way to work with the village of Nuiqsut and try an reach an understanding. Demonizing them will not work. ConocoPhillips will look elsewhere rather than face years of litigation. Working with a development supportive Arctic Slope Regional Corporation to address this problem is a good first step. Shell Oil years ago showed us how to blow a promising field. Let us not repeat that mistake.

  4. “After being introduced to the subcommittee by Congresswoman Mary Peltola…” You don’t need to know much more than this if you’re on the fence about voting in November. She supposedly sides with Murk and Sully for permitting ConocoPhillips’ Willow project and then, out of the other side of her mouth, introduces the Nuiqsut fabricator. I’m going to assume that Peltola wanted Mayor Ahtuangaruak’s testimony to be true. Or, was she in on the lie from the beginning? Better Rank the Red or she’s in for two more years.

  5. AND(?), the consequences of lying to Congress is … what?
    OR(?), is it just common place, the basis of political strategy?
    Shameful and Unbecoming!
    Unacceptable!

  6. When Ranked Choice Voting picks the winner, you don’t get represented as with Mary and her anti-oil friends.

  7. If they despise oil and gas so much, tell the good people of Nuiqsut to start using whale oil and blubber to heat. This ought to make them closer to the wacko environmentalists.

  8. If the people of Nuiqsut were so against oil development on the North Slope they should immediately dig up the runway the oil companies built in their village. They should stop driving their vehicles on Spine Road, they should reject the free energy supplied to their village, they should slash the tires of every Haliburton truck running through their village, and they should BURN EVERY DOLLAR OF OIL MONEY THEY EVER TOOK.
    A bunch of grifting scumbags.

    • You guys r funny to think that nuiqsut thinks the same as the mayor. It’s like saying your just like the drug addict from across your town right? Your from anchorage or a city? Yeah your like everybody else thts lives there right? Exactly. Wht i thought. Just like the same ppl u live next door to, don’t think the same way you do

  9. It used to be the delegations would give a bit of a primer to prospective testifiers from “back home” regarding guidelines and “implications”. Testifying before even fake, sell-out, alleged “Congress” is no time for deer in headlights flights of fantasy. If one is prone to this stay away from “the swamp”.

  10. Under federal law (18 U.S.C. Section 1001), it is a crime to “knowingly and willfully” conceal something from or make a false statement to Congress (even if it not under oath or unsworn statements) — punishable with up to five years in prison. This means that if a person is found to have lied during a congressional hearing or investigation, or simply lied to an FBI or other federal agent, actual jail time “could” result.

    Unless your part of the Left progessive movement, a favored member of a special interest group or minority that Congress/Federal Government cares about, then it is okay for an obvious “white lie”. I am betting she won’t be charged with perjury or making false statements to Congress.

    • Do you spend as much energy supporting that as you railing against conservatives Frank, or is that not good policy for your business endeavors?

  11. Remember when Mary Peltola was for the Willow project, before she was against it? Voters better wake up quick!

  12. This effort is dead in the water because you have a criminal regime in DC that is in lock step with the World Economic Forum and is implementing a Ponzi “Green” scheme upon the world based on fake science that supports their “climate crisis”. The next big push will be locking down all nations like they did in the planned-demic. They will falsely claim by shutting the world down again it will have a positive affect on our “Carbon Footprint” while the economy and your future are destroyed. Anyone sick of this International Criminal Organization yet? In the meantime, they have implemented a vote steal system here in Alaska and the USA using Dominion Machines and Ranked Choice Voting to control the peasants. Are we just going to lay down and take this or are we going to take action to save our future and our Constitutional freedoms? It has been proven that their vote fraud system can be overcome. If you are sitting on your couch saying all is lost and why vote, you are the problem. It will take all hands on deck, if you are not registered to vote, get registered. If you have the ability to show up at a precinct voting station, vote on election day and in large numbers. If you are able to volunteer as an election worker or observer, do so. Dunleavy refuses to even question whether there is a problem with Alaska’s voting system. What was the last time the State actually cleaned its voter rolls? When were the machines certified and who did the certification? Is signature verification used in mail-in balloting and are they being strict on confirming the ballots are in by the deadline before the election? Why are precincts like mine using flair markers for marking the ballots that bleed through the ballot? The list goes on and on. RCV was specifically implemented by Murkowski’s staff to favor her in the election. Many Alaskans don’t even know the rules of RCV and how to mark the ballot, which will disqualify their ballot. This was by design to confuse voters. I don’t know how to put it more bluntly than to tell you, they do not respect you and could care a less what you think about their policies. Know who you are voting for and what they stand for. You will know them by their actions, not their words. Preserve the Constitution and rule of law. Demand answers with substance and never accept things at face value. We are in a battle for our future and it will affect our children’s future.

  13. Ms. Ahtuangaruak is a health aide but refers to herself as “Doctor”. She appears to have participated in the MEDEX program which (if she graduated) would likely have made her a PA and qualified to be a health aide however…

    “In 2017, Oberlin College gave Ahtuangaruak an honorary doctorate in recognition of her work” as an environmental activist.

    An activist that works as a health aide after graduating PA school yet comfortably introduces themself as doctor is living in and promoting a deception each day. When life is a fabrication it may not seem all that far fetched that you should be able to lie to congress as well.

    Ms. Ahtuanaruak believes that flares on the Slope are directly linked to “thyroid disorders, cardiac disease, obesity, and diabetes”.

    For the rest of this woman’s career she will be known as a liar and to some degree it appears likely that Stauber may have expected that of her although his gender thing was off so maybe he wasn’t familiar w/ her prior barkings. Regardless, there is no substitute for integrity. That Peltola might have used Rosemary Ahtuangaruak as a first best spokesperson for Alaska’s future will be difficult to ignore.

  14. Environmentalist have been using Alaska Natives to advance their agendas for years. Remember when the Ford Foundation hired the Athabascans to come out against ANWR?

  15. The same folks crying the blues about not enough revenue want to kill the #1 source of revenue. These people are stupid.

    • Exactly. They have to chance to bring good paying jobs to their people, but instead, they lobby against their own best interests.

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