Fuel Fix by Colin Eaton.  

By a slim margin, Alaska’s new business-friendly oil tax regime has survived an effort to overturn it and  revert to a previous tax structure that cost companies more.

A measure on the state’s primary ballot Tuesday would have reinstated Alaska’s progressive oil taxes, originally installed in 2007 under former Gov. Sarah Palin and dismantled last year in an effort to lure oil companies to the state. The old taxes were tied to crude prices, and oil companies say they would have hampered the industry’s new plans for investments in the state’s lagging oil production.