FAIRBANKS — The defense of the 2007 Alaska Gasline Inducement Act by some state leaders comes despite criticism from skeptics who view the law as a failed effort to force the hand of the oil companies that hold exclusive development leases for much of the North Slope’s natural gas reserves.

The criticism comes from those who served under Gov. Frank Murkowski, who was defeated in the 2006 Republican primary by Sarah Palin. Murkowski himself, in an early November newspaper opinion column, called Palin’s gas line plan an unsuccessful and “populist” distraction that let other natural gas development projects progress while ignoring the reality that oil companies must commit to a project in Alaska for the project to work.

“The (state’s oil) producers will not unconditionally commit their gas” under Palin’s Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, Murkowski wrote, “and the gas line cannot be financed without that commitment.”

Roger Marks, an economist with the state until Palin’s election, said the act faces a wall of problems. Marks, writing in an independent September critique of the act, said the act commits the state to assist financially either TransCanada, with up to $500 million in help, or to paying the company off at up to three times that amount if the state winds up helping a different project instead. He said the prospect of that penalty could subtly bias the state against working with oil companies even if their competing project were shown to carry a superior chance of success.

Both Murkowski and Marks said all three big North Slope oil companies would need to ready natural gas for sale for any North Slope pipeline proposal to be profitable enough to work. Lack of consensus on any single project, they said, could doom chances that a potential builder would cement enough shipping agreements to secure financing for the multibillion-dollar construction project.

Contact staff writer Christopher Eshleman at 459-7582.