Plans for natural gas pipeline still months away
shns.com
By RICHARD RICHTMYER
Anchorage Daily News
07-FEB-06
JUNEAU, Alaska -- A natural gas pipeline contract is unlikely to surface for months, legislative leaders said Monday, and they have not even seen new oil tax legislation that would be a key component of any gas line deal.
House Speaker John Harris and Majority Leader John Coghill Jr. mapped out a timeline Monday for the two mammoth legislative initiatives _ an overhaul of the state's oil production tax and ratifying a natural gas pipeline contract _ that even in a best-case scenario runs into the summer.
"I'm going to guess, without having a crystal ball, that we'll have an extended session out of this before it's all over," said Harris, R-Valdez.
Gov. Frank Murkowski's administration has been negotiating for nearly two years with the North Slope producers for a contract setting out terms for the proposed pipeline to carry natural gas to the Lower 48.
If or when a contract proposal is brought forward, that would be only one of several difficult and time-consuming steps.
If they were to reach a deal, the contract would be open for a two-month public review before going to the Legislature for approval. The administration would be allowed 30 days to renegotiate after the public review, which could mean up to a three-month delay before lawmakers begin their debate.
The Legislature is scheduled to adjourn its regular session in just over three months on May 9.
Further clouding the prospects of a gas line deal is a proposal to revamp the state's oil production tax.
The governor has said the Legislature will have to replace the current production-based oil tax with a tax tied to the oil companies' Alaska profits, before his team can ink a gas line deal. He said the producers want to know how much oil tax they will have to pay in the future before making a gas line deal.
An oil tax revision on this scale, legislators and analysts say, is a huge, complicated and risky undertaking.
But it remained unclear Monday when a definitive plan would be introduced and who would sponsor it.
At first, members of Murkowski's administration said the governor would introduce a bill. They have since backpedaled, saying they are working with the legislative leadership and suggesting that a lawmaker would introduce an oil tax bill.
"Do we intend to introduce an (oil tax) bill? No. I think we'll work with the administration, and our hope is that the administration will introduce a bill here very shortly," Harris said Monday.
(Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, shns.com.) |
