newsminer.com

Related Blog

Capital Focus

Keep up-to-date on the latest news from Juneau

JUNEAU — As state lawmakers look ahead to a special legislative session on the natural gas pipeline, some are openly challenging Gov. Sarah Palin’s approach to picking the best project for the state.

“I don’t want to be tied down to any process,” House Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez, said Monday.

“You can consider something under AGIA,” he added, referring to the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, which Palin introduced and lawmakers passed last year, “but let’s not just limit it to that. If there are better ideas that come out because of this process — or different ideas that should be considered for the benefit of Alaskans — then let’s do that.”

Harris and other House members approved a resolution Sunday urging Palin to consider an “in-state” gas pipeline during a summer special session that’s expected to focus on the TransCanada pipeline proposal, which involves a line running into Canada. The resolution was introduced last Wednesday and passed the Senate on the same day.

At first it was unclear what exactly lawmakers wanted through the resolution.

Some lawmakers said they just wanted to consider a small “bullet line” from northern Alaska to the Anchorage area that could be built quickly and wouldn’t interfere with the bigger line proposed by TransCanada. The resolution cites “all-time high” energy costs in the state and dwindling gas production in the Cook Inlet.

But other lawmakers hinted they wanted to open the doors to companies that hadn’t applied under AGIA or had submitted applications that were deemed incomplete.

On Monday, Harris and others made it clear they wanted the latter.

Sen. Charlie Huggins, R-Wasilla, noted that AGIA offered incentives to companies willing to meet certain requirements but didn’t stop companies from going outside of AGIA and advancing other pipelines without the incentives or requirements.

“This would be other pipelines,” he said of the resolution. “I want us to be able to look at things that are beneficial to Alaskans and that Alaskans are asking for — and in-state use is at the front of their brain lobes.”

Huggins chairs the Senate Resources Committee, which sponsored the resolution.

The resolution passed both bodies with broad, bipartisan support, and Huggins and Harris both said Monday they would probably try to call the Legislature into a special session with the expanded parameters if Palin refused to broaden the agenda of her special session.

“I would be surprised if that didn’t happen,” Huggins said.

Support from two-thirds of the Legislature is required for lawmakers to call themselves in.

One of the few House members to vote against the resolution, Minority Leader Beth Kerttula, D-Juneau, charged Monday that some lawmakers were using the resolution to try to derail the AGIA process.

“I’ve seen a lot of aspersions and demagoguery and confusion and subterfuge used in the last week,” she said at a news conference. “My protest vote was to say, ‘We’re not going to let this get derailed’ — at least I’m not going to.”

Kerttula refused to give names but said later she thought there were lawmakers who wanted the AGIA process to fail and were using the resolution as a “smokescreen.” She said she was concerned lawmakers would put all the focus on a smaller line and then say they couldn’t go ahead with the TransCanada line.

Palin’s administration is still reviewing the TransCanada proposal, and members of her gas line team say a decision has not yet been made on whether to give the company a state license. If the administration does recommend going ahead with TransCanada, lawmakers will have 60 days to review the proposal and vote on it.

Palin and her team tried to address concerns over high energy prices and calls for in-state gas at a news conference last Friday. They argued that AGIA would result in the most economic gas for Alaskans — because it would keep pipeline shipping costs down — and that a smaller pipeline for in-state needs should be considered against other ways to reduce energy costs, such as renewable energy, not against a larger pipeline.

Palin also offered to spend up to $8 million to study the feasibility of a bullet line.

Under AGIA, the state faces stiff penalties if it supports a competing pipeline project after awarding a license for another project. But the law includes an exemption for pipelines carrying fewer than 500 million cubic feet of gas per day — more than enough to meet in-state needs, according to Palin’s administration.

On Monday, Palin’s special assistant, Joe Balash, said the administration didn’t think it was necessary to expand the special session to cover a small bullet line or other projects outside of AGIA.

“The whole point of AGIA is to get a project moving ... and we have an application that met the hurdles — the criteria that the Legislature helped set last year,” he said

Balash said if the administration decided an “all-Alaska” project involving liquefied natural gas was better for the state, it would present lawmakers with a proposal for moving ahead with LNG.

He added that the governor could always expand the agenda of the special session later.