BRADNERS' ALASKA LEGISLATIVE DIGEST

This issue has embroiled the Legislature for several years now and it looks like 2017 will be a repeat. Gov. Bill Walker argues that there is unfinished business, with changes still needed that were not done in a 2016 overhaul of the state oil tax incentive program. This will be a hot-button issue once again, and its outcome will be influenced by how the Legislature organizes. The new coalition House organization will likely favor changes in the tax code, while…

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The 2016 election is over, with results that stunned the nation. We’ll comment separately on how the national changes will affect Alaska, but we can’t resist passing on a report from Politico that Donald Trump may consider Sarah Palin for Secretary of the Interior. Alaska went Republican as expected, heavily favoring Trump. Lisa Murkowski and Don Young were returned to the U.S. Senate and U.S. House. All of the 40 members of the state House were up for reelection as…

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The Alaska LNG Project is making progress in cost-reductions as preliminary engineering nears completion, managers of a joint industry-state consortium told state legislators in recent briefings. Wednesday. Estimates made earlier were for costs to range from $45 billion to $65 billion, but changes in the project made in preliminary Front-End Engineering and Design have lowered the cost to about $45 billion, industry members of the Alaska LNG Groups told lawmakers. The state of Alaska will take over the project at…

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Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas denied approval for renewal of a key operating permit for the Prudhoe Bay field on the North Slope in a letter sent June 30 to BP, the field operator. The division gave field owners BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil until Sept. 1 to remedy issues that were raised, according to the letter. The current permit, the Plan of Development for the field, ended June 30 but has been extended to Nov. 1. The state is…

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Despite legislators’ inability to adopt fiscal reforms, the good news is that Gov. Bill Walker isn’t backing off. He is keeping the issue on the table, and showing plenty of guts. His June 29 veto of half the funding for the Permanent Fund Dividend is a strong and powerful wake-up call to the public and the Legislature–a message delivered with a sledgehammer. Let’s put it this way: He has chosen to be less the politician and more a governor. The…

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Both the state House and Senate have passed their versions of the FY 2017 state operating budget and both make several hundred millions of dollars in cuts from the current FY 2016 spending. But with about a month remaining before the Legislature’s scheduled April 17 adjournment, several big spending issues are still unresolved that will affect the final bottom line: (1) A budget figure for oil and gas tax incentive payments, which depends on what happens to House Bill 247,…

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The state Legislature convened its 2016 regular session Jan. 19 amid fresh concerns about plummeting oil prices and state revenues. It’s isn’t a pretty picture: Back-to-back $3 billion-plus budget deficits and draws from state cash reserves. If there’s a silver lining it is this: Pressure is growing on legislators to adopt a fiscal plan, tapping other resources, such as investment earnings, to offset lower oil income. Several Senate leaders have endorsed the idea of using Permanent Fund earnings, but the…

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State Attorney General Craig Richards unveiled Gov. Bill Walker’s new fiscal plan, in concept form, in a Oct. 28 briefing to legislators in Juneau. Essentially the plan calls for bulking up the Permanent Fund by transferring in other state savings accounts like the Constitutional Budget Reserve and also having certain oil revenues flow to the Fund instead of to the state general fund. The bulked-up Fund would then be managed like one of the large endowments that fund major universities…

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Alaska gas producers are considering expanding the pipeline size for the planned $50 billion-plus Alaska LNG Project from 42 inch to 48 diameter pipe, Gov. Bill Walker said Friday in an interview. The state of Alaska is a partner in the project with producers BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil. Walker has pushed for the larger pipe size to provide capacity for shipping more North Slope gas, the governor said. “If the pipe is expanded the state and the producers have agreed…

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Prudhoe Bay producers now expect to ultimately recover 14.1 million-14.2 billion barrels of oil from the giant Alaska North Slope field, about 60% of the estimated oil in place in the reservoir rock, company managers said. That’s up from 9.6 billion barrels, a 40% recovery, estimated when Prudhoe was first discovered in 1968. “The Prudhoe producers have done a very good job of maximizing recovery, and they’ve had a very high quality reservoir to work with,” said Mark Myers, Alaska’s…

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