After six years of steering the North Slope Borough through changing times, Mayor Edward Itta has hit his term limits and will step aside to let someone else take charge. Located in the village of Barrow, high above the Arctic Circle and one of America’s northernmost points, the mayor’s office Itta holds may be remote but it is far from inconsequential.

It is here, along hundred miles of coastline hugging the Arctic Ocean that people’s livelihoods are directly affected by the oil and gas industry. It is here that new exploration of the outer continental shelf is planned for 2012. And it is here that the region’s indigenous people who thrived before Big Oil by living off of the land and sea intend to make sure the marine life that continues to nourish them withstands the impact of industry. For the oil industry, the North Slope is a fickle partner. Sometimes welcoming, sometimes defiant and almost always somewhat skeptical, its posture can both ease tensions or throw up obstacles, as has occurred under Itta’s guidance.

Five people are vying for the seat Itta will leave: a former five-time mayor, a whaling captain’s wife, two assemblymen and a gas field worker. All will have to walk the delicate line between defending the environment and fostering the industry that feeds the government’s coffers. Nearly 98 percent of the $277 million the borough collects annually in property taxes comes from the oil industry, and most of the 20,000 jobs in the region stem from oil and gas-related activities.

At a time when oil production at Prudhoe Bay, the nation’s largest oil field, located in the North Slope Borough, is on the decline, how to get more oil flowing and what new sources to tap has lead policy discussions at local, state and national levels. For this reason, Mayor Itta recently came to be known as the mayor at the top of the world and one of the most powerful mayor’s in the nation, as described by Parade Magazine.

Before he became Alaska’s Lt. Governor, Mead Treadwell, who at the time was serving as chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, told the magazine “the terms by which future oil will flow to the U.S. will be set in large part by North Slope residents. That’s how important Itta is.”

The point is underscored by Monday’s approval, a little more than two weeks before voters will choose Itta’s replacement, of air permits for exploratory drilling by Royal Dutch Shell in the Chukchi Sea during the summer of 2012. Shell’s offshore plans in Alaska have suffered setbacks in the past, including opposition from the borough itself. In 2007 it sued to stop Shell, a move that forced Shell, according to Itta, to seriously listen to and address the concern of locals, including those worried that industrial activity in the ocean would harm or deter wildlife and that clean up capabilities in the event of a spill were insufficient.  By the time environmentalists and other North Slope villagers were ready to continue the legal battle against Shell in 2010, Itta was no longer willing to use the courts to wield influence over Shell. Itta had achieved his goal. The company had learned, and listened. It had agreed to cease operations during whale migrations and hunts.  

And earlier this year, Itta spoke to the dilemma of opposing offshore drilling while at the same time knowing where the money that drives his community comes from and the struggles that could ensue if, as production declines, the borough’s income dwindles. “If there's no more oil, what are we going to do? That's a very real question my people are struggling with now,” he told the Arctic Sounder.

It’s also a question that the candidates who wish to succeed Itta are grappling with.

“It is crucial that we work closely with oil and gas companies, including independents, to explore and develop new oil and gas resources for continued future income. We must protect the OCS areas in the Beaufort and Chukchi [Seas] at all cost, especially our subsistence resources and especially our subsistence whaling,” George Ahmaogak, Sr., told the Arctic Sounder in the paper’s Sept. 15 edition.