Reports and Research Memoranda
[About Richard Fineberg]
For three decades, Richard A. Fineberg has researched and reported on economic and environmental issues related to Alaska and global petroleum development. Fineberg came to Alaska in 1969 to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in political science at the University of Alaska, leaving that position in 1971 to devote full time to freelance reporting.
Fineberg discusses Alaska's petroleum experience with financier/
philanthropist George Soros in Baku, Azerbaijan, May 2003. (Photo:
OSI Assistance Fndtn. / Azerbaijan.)
In 1983 Fineberg entered government service, where he held the position of senior advisor to the Governor of Alaska on oil and gas policy between 1986 and 1989. In this capacity, his portfolio included issues such as oil and gas litigation, national energy policy and revenue forecasting, as well as special assignments.
Since leaving government he has consulted and prepared reports for non-profit organizations, government agencies, independent developers and private investors. His independent research has provided new and sometimes controversial insights into topics that include the profitability and long-term production prospects of Alaska's North Slope oil fields; state and federal petroleum revenue; economic, operational and safety issues on TAPS; and the causes and effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Recently he has reported on oil and gas development in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and the Russian Far East and prepared a chapter on Alaska's petroleum litigation for the book, Caspian Oil Windfalls: Who Will Benefit? (Open Society Institute, 2003; foreword by Joseph E. Stiglitz).
Fineberg, the principal investigator for Research Associates of Ester (Fairbanks), Alaska, and this website, is available for consulting. (For rates, contact Richard Fineberg, Email: fineberg@alaska.net.)
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1978: "Richard Fineberg, a gaunt, intense, mustachioed man who, for a time covering oil and gas for the News-Miner, scored one of the few genuine beats that actually originated with a newsman (a major leak at the Galbraith Lake camp, of whose full extent Alyeska had not seen fit to inform the reporters or the public). Later, free-lancing from Fairbanks, he was able to write more broadly of the ways in which the project's intentions had outrun performance; and to reflect on his colleagues' failure, for the most part, to keep up with either." —
Robert Douglas Mead, Journeys Down the Line: Building the 2003: "Fineberg, who identifies strongly with Alaska's environmental community, has been a forceful and, among a small cult following, a credible critic of the oil industry in general and the Alyeska pipeline company in particular for more than thirty years on several fronts, economic as well as environmental. [With the Alaska Forum for environmental Responsibility] . . . he has produced several well-researched, artfully crafted and reasoned reports which often demolish Alyeska's, JPO's and Alaska Governor Tony Knowles's glib and facile posturing with respect to critical Trans Alaska pipeline matters." —
Joe LaRocca, Alaska Agonistes: The Age of Petroleum —
How Big Oil 2006: "Richard Fineberg's harsh critiques of the Alaska oil patch make him a rare commodity in a state largely financed by oil. . . .
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Tom Moran, "The Devil's Advocate," Far North Oil
& Gas (To view entire article, click here.) |