Don’t trust Big Oil
Published Saturday, June 28, 2008
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To the editor:
I see some legislators are balking at investing $500 million to get a gas line going with TransCanada. Their argument seems to be that Big Oil is promising to build a line that won’t cost us a dime. HA!!
I hope nobody is fooled into thinking that Big Oil has made any kind of firm proposal.
Also don’t be fooled into thinking that their fictional gas line won’t cost us a dime. Big Oil will be back, once the competition is defeated, to get huge, long term, tax concessions, or guess what? ... TA DA! ... they won’t build a gas line!
The whole issue with Big Oil is CONTROL! They want to totally control our resources so they can continue to reap huge profits. We scrape by in the winter, trying to keep our homes livable, plus pay our other bills, and they are bringing in unprecedented profits. Their top brass made more in one year than most people only dream about making in a lifetime.
These are multi-national corporations, not people. They have no loyalties, except to the bottom line. Don’t get taken in by their feel-good ads that try to make these corporations sound human and caring. These are profit-making corporations, and that is their sole purpose.
Our legislature’s task is to make the best deal for us, the citizens of Alaska, that they can. Big Oil had an opportunity to submit a proposal, but did not want to follow the rules laid out by the governor and our Legislature. Instead, as is their normal behavior, they want to make their own rules, which of course, favor them and not us.
If the TransCanada proposal is rejected, Big Oil is again in total control of our resources.
Please urge your legislators to approve the TransCanada proposal, and keep the state, and us, in the profit loop. We must not cede control of our resources to Big Oil.
Juanita Helms
Fairbanks
Community Discussion
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does it really matter? on one hand is "big oil" and on the other is selling ourselves out...
so what does it matter anymore. our government doesnt have the "cajones" nor the ability to fix the raping of the taxpayer by these energy coorperations, and nor do they care to.
as long as their hands are clean they dont care. so again, does it really matter who screws us over? Palin or Big Oil? who cares...
Why doesn't anyone ever talk about the gas contracts this State signed with these companies, one exception Point Thompson. Are we stuck with what the last Governor agreed on. Anyone know of a web site people can go to to look at these gas contracts, maybe than people would understand things a whole lot better.
Great letter and very true. Our legislators need to do the right thing and move forward with AGIA and TC. Is there someway we can have Ramras's vote not counted since 99 % of his constituents think he's and idiot?
I'm with the burninator on this the people can throw all the ideas out they want the state dont care what you want and big oil all they want from us is money so who cares i sure dont
When I came to Alaska, I embraced the "do it yourself" attitude prevailent among the people I met. This has served me well, and with hindsight I can tell it is an impossible dream to fufill elsewhere in the U.S. Now we come to what is basically a debate over the future of our state, and all that is heard is "Let these people do it" or "let those people do it". Unbelievable. What has happened to our rugged individualism that we no longer care to assure our own future; that we would rather let others make our choices and decide what is best?
Neither Trans-Alaska or Conoco have met MY guidelines; that being in-state distribution FIRST...Its time we all agree that in order for any proposal to really work for our benefit, we have to DO IT OURSELVES.
Did Govenor Palin tell Exxon to take a hike, yet? After the pathetic $500 million = $20,000 per victim in Cordova, I'd say "GET OUT Exxon".
Alaska is a major stock holder of Exxon, tell the State to sell off the stocks.
Things are getting real interesting in the Arctic this summer...
Gazprom and BP might elope to Venezuela for a honeymoon..
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ne...
The ice might go out at the North Pole..
the pentagoonies are all lathered up about showing their "tuff-stuff" off hoping to get little gold-plated usik pinned to their chest..
Gack, if you combined the resources of global BigOil it would outweigh USA and China combined...
I'm building a biodiesel moho that gets 60mpg..
anybody who has more than one megayacht hasn't grown up yet
Sarah Palin just wrote an op-ed in Sit-News..
she sez: If the state does NOT give financial support to anybody who builds and operates a competing gasline to TC, then the state is off the hook for breach of contract with TC.
"A bullet line will never directly supply gas to Kotzebue or Ketchikan."
=====
Whutza "bullet line" ???
....I think they're made out of steel :)
Kotzebue doesn't need a bullet line becuz it's sitting ontop of a big coal and gasfield anyways..
Ketchikan will do just fine with bottled gas.
http://www.dced.state.ak.us/dca/aeis/Gra...
...and Fairbanks doesn't need a energy-gasline from the NorthSlope anyways..
huh?
south of Salchaket Slough theres big-bcf of CBM Wainright likes to shoot holes into downrange...
maybe we should shoot back??...(;-P)
...now that doesn't mean that the state is barred from giving NON-financial support to help Alaskans to build our own gasline.
So, as long as banks don't get involved between the state and The Sourdough Gas Passers we're all good to go.
...plus there's a tiny sliver that duzzint compete with Enstar or TC within the 500mil cuft/day rule...
...if we stick with 30mil cuft/day then we can still get state funding.
[is that 30mil of liquid or gas?]
MethaneHydrate is exempt from the lawyer trap too.
LPG north of Atigun might not be specified in the contract either.
....I've seen lawyers try to get a gallon of milk out of a cow, but they don't know that I can get a gallon of milk out of a lawyer...(;-P)
We could toss a plastic gasline across the Tanana for less than a few hunny-thousand and start drillin' for CBM yesterday...
methane is a big reason why the ParksFire spread so fast.
Shallow CBM is easy to find with primitive tools, but getting a lot of it requires fancy coil-drill equipment for punching lateral spreaders..
plow and cap works too if the soils are just right.
...time 4 dinner
The Governor is leaning toward a bullet line for in-state gas that will not compete with the Trans Canada proposal according to her weekly bulletin. That said Trans Canada is the only company that actually put a proposal on the table that met state guidlines for getting a line built to get the gas to a market large enough to eventually replace the state's oil revenue.
I am not sure what a bullet line is exactly, but I agree with Juanita that we can't trust Exxon, BP, or Trans Canada to deliver gas to Alaskans. We need to do that ourselves and while we are at it provide an option for home owners to forfeit a PFD to get the lines ran to our homes and convert them to gas with cost sharing by the state. Alaska's Clear and Equitible Share Oil Production Tax, (ACES)in my opinion still conceeds too much to the producers but is a much improved tax plan over it's predicessor the Petroleum Profits Tax (PPT).
I'm assuming everyone is talking about ENSTAR's pipeline as the BULLET LINE? But I still don't see were rural Alaska will benefit from that project, without a means beyond laying pipe from the Foothills to South Central.
Some place in the Interior is going to have to be a off take facility that can at least extract propane for the "Interior suburbs and remote Alaska" or get some cheaper heating oil and diesel for electrical power generation, in the short term.
Governor, let's make sure that is part of the "bullet line" package, too. And just a reminder: that $1200 energy dividend will only buy 2 1/2 barrels of heating oil.
just as long as we keep the NGL's here.
NGL's is what propelled the mess in Prince William Sound..
not just Exxon,
Alyeska...and the state too, really screwed that one up.
Mixing NGL's with crude and shipping it out of Valdez is like breaking the rules of keeping a good composting toilet.
[don't mix yer pee with yer poop]
Alaska has a big surplus of methane..
so much in fact that paying Canada 500mil to take it away is cheap fire insurance.
....but we need all the propane, ethane, and helium here.
There's still 95% of the original oil on the slope..
the big steal-deal pipeline is designed to be dual-purpose..
just in case Amerigo delNorte decides to make another 100year war on what ever their movie "producers" dream up.
......flash/rumble
It is all hooey anyway. They have had the ability to send large "envelopes" of gas down the TransAlaska Pipeline for the last 10 years. Glennallen would be the natural split off point for a line going to the valley and a new generating facility there. Pump Station 6 by the Yukon would be an ideal place to send gas from by boat for western Alaska. So much we can do and no reason not to. We can sell from Valdez as well. We don't even have it together to have mostly Alaskans doing the work up north now let alone plan for the future. While Veco was horsing it to us has ended we have done no job at all of picking up the pieces in a way that Alaskans gain new jobs.
The big oil gasline proposal is all about undercutting the governor and AGIA, not building a gasline. Just look at how its put the brakes on the legislative sessions over TransCanada's proposal. Sure they've spent some money on "their plan", but they have that to burn, and consider it an investment in that it might make a government they detest look bad. What, TransCanada submits an acceptable proposal, and all of a sudden the oil companies are full of enthusiasm to build their own pipeline? No, this is just corporate manuevering; if TransCan gets turned down, the oil companies will suddenly lose their memory.
With no alternative in the works, pretty much all of our legislators would have to get behind the TransCan plan, or risk looking like obstructionists. The Denali plan gives big oil's friends something to point to if they vote against TransCan, the claim being "if big oil is going to go ahead and build a gasline, why spend hal a billion state dollars on TransCan?" But the oil company plan is almost certainly just smoke-and-mirrors, and hype, designed to affect the proceedings of the special session. I'd be interested in what happens to it once the legislature has it's vote.....
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