Please pardon a brief digression from the usual subject of these pages.    One of the reasons I spend time focused on Alaska oil & gas and fiscal policy issues is because of the importance of those issues to the future of the state.

Also important to the future of the state is the availability and role being played by the state’s four centers of higher education — the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Alaska Anchorage, the University of Alaska Southeast and Alaska Pacific University.   UAA — the University of Alaska Anchorage — recently published a story about my support for that institution.  If you do not already, I would urge you to support one or more of these institutions as well; they are as crucial to the future of Alaska as is oil and gas.

The story is part of the University’s “I Am/Love UAA” series and is available here.

An excellent discussion between Steve Coll and Steve Heimel of APRN’s “Talk of Alaska,” focused on Exxon’s role and position in the state.

One of Coll’s observations:  “ExxonMobil has this attitude they want low political risk and high political stability.  That suits their very rigid, long term business model. And, they regard Alaska as a place that they just can’t seem to figure out politically.  They often talk about Alaska the same way they talk about other political environments they can’t seem to manage.”

To the same point from the book, talking about the early years of the second Bush Administration:

Compared with other oil majors, however, ExxonMobil was no longer a dominant player inside the United States. Chevron had inherited some of the longest-lived of Standard Oil’s American oil properties, in California, and Chevron and British Petroleum had moved more boldly than Exxon into the Gulf of Mexico when leasing opened during the Clinton administration. Exxon had opportunities to exploit oil and natural gas in Alaska, but held back from some expensive deals because Raymond had learned after the Valdez that the political risks posed by Alaska’s frontier-minded political culture and populist governors were comparable to those in West Africa.

Interested in Alaska oil policy?  This interview offers an excellent insight into an important piece of the puzzle.

An important new book by Steve Coll, a favorite author whose earlier works on the breakup of AT&T and the disastrous acquisition by Texaco of Getty Oil had significant effects on my views.

Coll is hitting the interview circuit this week promoting his most recent book.  For Alaskans, one interview of special significance is this morning’s discussion with Steve Inskeep of NPR’s Morning edition on “How The Valdez Oil Spill Shaped ExxonMobil.”  Not only is the link to the Valdez oil spill of interest, of even more significance is Coll’s insight into how Exxon thinks and acts.  Coll also had second, longer interview focused on other aspects of the book yesterday with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air.

The Alaska World Affairs Council (AWAC) lunch yesterday was interesting — and important.  The speaker was Lou Pugliaresi, President of the Energy Policy Research Foundation (EPRINC).  The presentation was part of AWAC’s recent “Oil & Gas Series.”  The title was “The Coming Renaissance in North American Oil and Gas.”

While AWAC likely will post the slides Mr. Pugliaresi used at yesterday’s presentation, they largely were drawn from the set he used  earlier this month before the Annual Washington Energy Policy Conference hosted by Center for Strategic & International Studies.  That presentation is available here.

Continue reading →

Dave Stieren asked me to come on his  afternoon talk radio show yesterday to start a periodic discussion on Alaska oil issues.  In the course of addressing the issues which are on the agenda for the Special Session, we also touched on the University of Alaska Anchorage Volleyball Team, Dick Clark’s legacy and started toward — but didn’t quite reach, yet — bluegrass music.  The discussion is at the first half of the third hour yesterday.   The podcast is available at The Dave Stieren Show Hour 3 (4.19.2012).

In the last two legislative sessions preceding this one, the Alaska Dispatch offered some of the best political reporting available in this state on oil issues. Rena Delbridge during the 2010 session, and then Patti Epler during the 2011 session, were insightful, accurate and balanced. Both also were largely resident in Juneau during the sessions and thus, were able to keep their finger on the pulse of the developments as they occurred.

This year, the Dispatch has not stationed any reporters in Juneau, and more importantly, apparently has given up on reporting the news in favor of providing opinionated, and not altogether well informed, commentary. For those who had come to rely on the Dispatch as an excellent source of news mixed with insightful commentary, the result is disappointing. In many respects on this issue, the Dispatch is turning itself into a mirror version of the old Alaska Standard or the current Anchorage Daily Plant, a trite, predictable outlet for a single minded point of view. The result is that in reporting hard news on oil issues, this year the Dispatch has easily been passed by the “old guard” media, like the Anchorage Daily News, Fairbanks News-Miner and Juneau Empire. Continue reading →

In an article responding to recent columns by Andrew Halcro and me, the Alaska Dispatch’s Amanda Coyne concludes that “Alaska’s oil tax myths, surprise, remain busted.” In reaching the conclusion, the Dispatch’s Coyne argues that “[b]y standards of the average guy — the one who isn’t getting rich working for the oil companies, the one who doesn’t have future political aspirations, and the one who, in fact, makes up nearly all of our majestic state — the oil-tax myths we busted remain busted.”

While I didn’t get the reference at first, a friend pointed out that the Dispatch’s Coyne apparently was attempting to be insulting at the same time as she was summing up her argument. Because I never have – and never will – run for office (heck, I couldn’t even get elected to the Board of the Alliance), I suppose I am the “one” she references who is “getting rich working for the oil companies.” Given the level of my contributions to, among others, the University of Alaska Anchorage, I am not sure my tax accountant would agree, but whatever. Continue reading →

[Please also read the Addendum following the article added Feb. 28, 2012.]

In a highly-promoted two part series last week titled “Myth-busting claims in Alaska’s oil tax debate,” the Alaska Dispatch identified what they “consider the most duplicitous oil-tax myths being perpetrated surrounding the oil-tax debate raging in Juneau.”  Part 1 of the Dispatch piece is published here; part 2 is here.

The series doesn’t attempt to address “myths” existing on both sides of the debate – and there are.  Unabashedly, the Dispatch focuses only on what the authors identify as those “myths that have arisen, one way or the other, from the oil industry and their allies.”  So much for balanced reporting.

Later in the week, Andrew Halcro took on the Dispatch’s alleged myths one-by-one in his blog in a piece titled, “C’mon.”  Interestingly, while the Dispatch has run other of Halcro’s pieces on its pages, to date it has not published this rebuttal.  For those interested in balance, Halcro’s piece is a good beginning. Continue reading →