Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Alaska currently holds 35 trillion cubic feet of proven recoverable natural gas resources, about 19 percent of total U.S. reserves. Efforts to construct a pipeline to transport this natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to the lower 48 states have been stalled since 1982. The recent increase in natural gas prices has renewed interest in completing the pipeline, a project that is estimated to cost up to $20 billion. In addition to providing access to significant natural gas reserves, some expect the project to generate thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in revenues for the federal government and the State of Alaska. This report responds to a mandate in the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline Act (the Pipeline Act) that we conduct a study to determine the extent to which small business concerns have participated in the construction of oil and gas pipelines. The Pipeline Act includes a "sense of Congress" provision that the sponsors of the Alaska natural gas pipeline should maximize the participation of small business concerns in contracts and subcontracts awarded for the project. This provision, while setting out a statement of congressional opinion, does …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In response to a Congressional request, we issued a report in June 2005 on the Department of Defense's (DOD) progress in determining and allocating resources needed to implement the New Triad today and in the future. In that report, we made recommendations to the Secretary of Defense to provide greater visibility of the projected spending and future investments for DOD's efforts to create the New Triad and acquire future capabilities. On April 28, 2005, we provided DOD with a draft of that report for review and comment. DOD did not provide comments in time to incorporate them in that report, which went to printing on June 24, 2005. DOD provided its comments to us on June 30, 2005. To present DOD's comments and provide our perspective on them, this report briefly summarizes our June 2005 report's objectives, results, and recommendations, along with DOD's comments and our evaluation of the comments."