Alaska Cruise Association Newsletter Features Our Editorial - Bill Walker Opines - Just Put Your Feet Up

Alaska's economy deteriorates with lower energy production as higher industry taxes nip at the heels of departing jobs and undermine all gas pipeline projects.  Blissfully obese, the bureaucracy and budget crave more and consume our savings.  Unfunded government pension liabilities increase the debt burden to our children and threaten retirees.  Each well-intended elected official has a plan and each plan points to a different path.  Citizens with no intent to invest their own money clamor for public funding of their pet projects.  Predatory federal policies flanked by environmental activist allies persist in efforts to shut down Alaska.  Chaos consumes dialogue as calamity approaches.  The opportunities for leadership--and the risks--are immense.  -dh

What Can I Do to Help?  Join an Alliance: here or here or here or here and pray for leadership.

Juneau Empire by Bill Walker (NGP Photo).  The recent flurry of bills proposing different angles for building a so-called "bullet-line" signal the Legislature's mounting concern with the AGIA process and the ill-fated Canadian gas line route.  While the Legislature is correct to realize Alaska cannot wait for long-term energy solutions, it would be a grave mistake to accept failure and build a small-diameter, low-volume line that will do nothing to provide our children and grandchildren with the same level of prosperity that our generation has enjoyed.

Just Put Your Feet Up.  With a large-diameter gas pipeline uncertain and years out, some lawmakers want to put an in-state natural gas pipeline on the fast track by turning plans over to the Alaska Railroad.  While a huge pipeline such as TransCanada is proposing could link Alaska’s natural gas with North American markets, flow is still a decade away, and only if major hurdles are overcome.

Alaska Dispatch by Rena Delbridge.  As the 90-day legislative session hits the halfway mark this week, bills are piling up in committee while big issues enjoy hours of debate.

IStockAnalyst.  A two-week study of Alaska's oil and gas tax structure has convinced some state senators that the Legislature needs to act fast to change the system or risk the plundering of state riches.

Alaska Daily Planet by Tom Brennan (NGP Photo-r, 5-15-09).  I don’t have the expertise to counter the oil-tax claim made by the state’s oil and gas consultant, Rich Ruggerio from Gaffney, Cline & Associates, but I sure as hell have a few questions.  Ruggerio said Alaska is about in the middle of oil taxing provinces and its share of the take compares with a number of other parts of the world. I wouldn’t accept that as gospel — I’d be very suspicious, if you want the truth — but I would ask him if the so-called comparable oil provinces were on their way up or, like Alaska, on their way down.  The ones he mentioned, Australia, Brazil and Indonesia, don’t seem in any way comparable to Alaska — except that they are all on the decline the way Alaska is. The risks and investments required to find or develop large reserves there are relatively small and returns far greater than in Alaska, where the reverse is true.  If Alaska is going to compete for industry investment, those provinces are the ones we have to beat. Matching them in tax levels just won’t do the job.

ADN by Tim Mowry.  Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, one of the country's most prolific animal-rights groups and based in Connecticut, showed up Saturday to testify in support of expanding a 122-square-mile buffer zone. The zone sits on state land in the northeast corner of Denali National Park and Preserve, and trapping wolves is prohibited in the buffer zone.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club also promotes its anti-civilization agenda in neighboring Canada.  Sierra Club Canada is pleased that so many of our interventions in the hearings for the Mackenzie Gas Project are reflected in the 176 recommendations of the Joint Review Panel for this $16 billion project. Most notably, the Panel has recommended that natural gas from Northern Canada not be used to fuel further tar sands development in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

 Thursday in Anchorage was another big day for discussion of taxes and economics 101.