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Just a few years ago, I was visiting our projects in these Alaska shops. They were so busy with work on State and Native Land.

Alaska's new tax structure has shut down many projects and jobs over the last few years.

from here

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/us/politics/18palin.html

Even as she casts herself as an energy expert and is quick to attack the Obama administration on oil and gas issues, the two most prominent energy policies she put in place as governor of Alaska face new challenges less than two years after she left office.

Gov. Sean Parnell, Ms. Palin’s fellow Republican and former lieutenant, has announced that it is his top priority to undo parts of major oil tax increases that Ms. Palin made law. He argues that high state taxes, not just federal regulations, are preventing oil companies from exploring new drilling in Alaska and therefore jeopardizing future state revenues.

“Lower taxes means more competitive,” Mr. Parnell said last week. “It means more jobs.”

And the project Ms. Palin once portrayed as her principal legislative triumph, a plan to build a 1,700-mile natural gas pipeline that she said would transform the economy of Alaska and contribute to America’s domestic energy supply, seems an increasingly distant dream, undercut by low gas prices and more practical projects in other states.

Do you really believe that is the reason?

What companies have shut down projects and why wasn’t the natural gas pipeline started when prices were high? The remains that Ak’s natural gas doesn’t require tracking and should be more profitable.

The fact is that Federal regulations have been the biggest obstruction to new oil and gas in AK, in areas of known reserves.

Maloney puts the blame for things on the impasse squarely on the Legislature’s inability to agree on a needed adjustment to the state oil and gas production tax, which he says are too high.

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The oil companies said that this would be the result of Palin's add-on taxing of profits.