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.
So when Irwin and Palin raised the tax on oil is was on oil produced on state lands.
The nat gas pipeline would have been built or will be built to carry nat gas produced on state land.
The other conflict that Irwin and Palin created was over reclassifying Point Thompson from being stranded to not being stranded.
So it is not just Palin raising the oil tax that needs to be undone, but also Palins pipeline deal needs to be undone and Palin's Point Thompson deal needs to be undone.
seattle Times August 2008...
"BP Alaska, which runs Prudhoe Bay, said earlier this year that it had delayed the development in the western region of the North Slope as a result of the tax. ConocoPhillips cited the same reason for scrapping a $300 million refinery project. "What the tax has done is take away all the upside," said Doug Suttles, president of BP Alaska. The U.K.-based oil company paid more than $500 million in taxes to Alaska last quarter — far more than it earned in profits from Alaskan oil, according to Suttles. Investment dollars are flowing instead to places that have a better return, like the massive deep-water projects offshore in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, where ConocoPhillips said the government take equals less than 50 percent of the barrel."
As for the pipeline, not one shovel of dirt has been moved to date. Palin committed $500 million of Alaska taxpayer dollars to TransCanada to cover the cost of development...regardless of whether the pipeline ever gets built.
It is these two policy disasters that, along with her resignation, turned many of us against her.
Yes, I was there, leading an engineering group in Alaska doing mostly North Slope projects. Projects that were in the early stages (ie. had not begun buying equipment) were shut down and the project team members were out of work.
What companies have shut down projects
ConocoPhillips, BP, Marathon, Pioneer, Chevron, TAPS. Every operating company I was aware of shutdown early stage projects.
why wasn’t the natural gas pipeline started when prices were high?
It had been started for years. There is a lot of study, survey, calculation to evaluate the options. My company had been hired a couple of times to participate in the studies.
The natural gas line is dead to the south. The project that Palin dedicated $500 million to begin engineering on is no longer economically feasible due to the tremendous amount of Natural Gas in the lower 48 from the new shale fields.
The fact is that Federal regulations have been the biggest obstruction to new oil and gas in AK, in areas of known reserves.
In Federal lands, yes. But the non-Federal lands in Alaska is about the size of California. There has been a lot of interest in building in the Brook Range foothills by smaller independents. But as long as the taxes are so high, they are going to invest in North Dakota, Texas, Canada where most of the dollars are not eaten up in Taxes.