A Citizen’s Guide

To the editor:

There was a blitzkrieg of fear-mongering advertising by the oil industry and its allies when the push was on to implement a concept called separate accounting. The idea was to base petroleum taxation on production occurring within Alaska. The producers didn’t like the idea and waged war against it and were mostly successful, as I recall.

Perhaps the producers felt better about concealing the profitability of their Alaska operations buried in the bowels of worldwide operations reports. The producers and the governor are asking the citizens of Alaska to take a leap of faith and base the proposed tax system on now magically transparent financial reports. Remember Enron? Even better, we are being asked to enshrine the tax scheme for three decades, which is about the length of time it took for the ELF to unravel even after it was supposedly improved about halfway through its life span.

There seems to be a strong bipartisan skepticism regarding this taxation affair, especially since it has been linked to a secret gas line agreement. Perhaps it is worth noting that about a year ago, Sempra Energy signed a memorandum of understanding with Gazprom to import liquefied natural gas to Baja, Calif., for use in California. Sempra was a suitor to buy LNG from the Alaska Gasline Port Authority and market it on the West Coast.

Gov. Murkowski and the producers proclaimed a West Coast demand didn’t merit consideration, and so a ready customer was shunned. Plans for other terminals along the West Coast are afoot, and since California is among the largest economies worldwide, that would indicate there is a demand now and that it will grow even greater. Hopefully, our legislators will give their utmost consideration to a PPT favorable to the citizens of Alaska and resist the pressure that the oil producers and their allies are bringing to bear to enact some sort of give away. As some have pointed out, Alaska is generous in its taxation compared to many parts of the world and the producers are free of the worry of nationalization or violent disputes.

William McAmis

Fairbanks