Alaska needs tough negotiators

To the editor:

Each of Alaska’s recent governors entered office convinced that their negotiating skills would inspire the world’s most powerful corporations to weave Alaska’s best interests into their business plans:

• Gov. Sean Parnell lowered oil taxes last year, hoping this would unlock vast new oil fields and double the current level of North Slope oil production.

• Gov. Sarah Palin raised oil taxes in response to the “Corrupt Bastards Club” bribery scandal, then launched the “Alaska Gasline Inducement Act.”

• Gov. Frank Murkowski slashed oil taxes (i.e., “PPT”) in exchange for a “secret” deal to build a gasline. Veco “delivered” PPT by bribing legislators in the “Corrupt Bastards Club”.

• Gov. Tony Knowles’ gasline (a.k.a. “my way is the highway”) assumed that blocking a sub-sea gasline to Canada would trigger construction of a gasline that follows the Dalton, Richardson, and Alaska Highways.

• Gov. Walter Hickel claimed that returning him to the Governor’s Mansion in 1990 would allow him to transform his Yukon-Pacific gas line into reality.

Gov. Parnell hoped he could forego tough negotiations, and obtain better outcomes than his predecessors. So right out the gate, Parnell gave away the farm — i.e. a tax cut with no commitments. Once it was embedded in Alaska’s statutes, Exxon, BP, and Conoco Phillips rounded up Parnell’s utopian vision, and put it out to pasture.

Big Oil declared that our declining oil production will continue. And before that ink dried, BP decided to slash 1/5 of its Alaska workforce. It’s abundantly clear that Alaska needs to elect tough negotiators, and Parnell doesn’t qualify.

Paul Austin

Fairbanks