Daily Archives: February 18, 2014

My appreciation to the Anchorage Daily News and Fairbanks News-Miner for running an op-ed piece I wrote.  The links to the online versions are  here (ADN) and here (News-Miner).   I titled the piece “The Legislature should rethink the Governor’s LNG proposal.”  The ADN ran it as “Governor’s plan the wrong way for the state to get a gas line.” 

BY BRAD KEITHLEY

As someone who long has argued in favor of state co-investment in the development of Alaska’s oil and gas resources, I was hopeful last fall when the state released the “Alaska North Slope LNG Royalty Study.”

With references to the need for “alignment” between the state and the industry and analyses of successful projects elsewhere in the world involving state participation, I believed that the Governor potentially was positioning Alaska to play a more active role in the development of its own resources, much in the same way as do some large landholders in the Lower 48 states and other governments that are resource owners.

The “Heads of Agreement” and related legislation (Senate Bill 138) that the Governor introduced at the start of the session, however, fall well short of the mark.  Instead of adopting global best practices taken from successful LNG projects, the Governor’s proposal is a confusing patchwork that is fraught with risk and even if it works perfectly, would not advance the goal of enabling the state to help drive increased activity where Alaska needs it most – in the upstream development of its oil and gas resources. Continue reading →