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ConocoPhillips sidestepping Alaska LNG exports?There may be a rally going on in the halls of Juneau to liquefy and export Alaska's natural gas to Asia. But ConocoPhillips doesn't seem as enthusiastic, according to an article Monday in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. When asked about Alaska's LNG export prospects during a recent conference call on Conoco's fourth-quarter earnings, a spokesperson for the supermajor said "more study was needed" on how to market natural gas -- and where -- before anything else happens. North American natural gas prices have been hammered by a glut of production and a mild winter that's further diminished demand. Natural gas for February delivery will cost about $2.49 per million BTUs, the lowest price since 2002, BusinessWeek reports here. What's that mean for Gov. Sean Parnell's negotiations with the major oil producers for alignment on a project to deliver Alaska's stranded natural gas reserves to any willing buyer? Conoco, one of the companies with which Parnell is negotiating, will likely be looking at reducing its investments in natural gas rather than expanding them, the News-Miner notes here. Alaska does not have stranded gas. The gas is in use producing oil. I know some reporters are not very bright. But see if you can wrap your mind around this: One cannot construct the worlds most expensive gas conditioning plan, most expensive 800 mile pipe and the world most expensive LNG terminal and expect to compete with those that have their gas at tidewater and need none of the above . ..hell, they charge the state for pumping the propane BACK INTO the ground up there!! Something like $0.25 per mbtu`s if my memory serves me. We are paying THEM to warehouse OUR gas while they delay us and advance already rapidly developing projects that would compete with Alaska gas, presenting a conflict of interest if you ask me. A conflict of interest , as well as warehousing gas on the leases we leased to them find and "produce" on. Leases have expectations based on reasonable past practices. Every month of delay, they go on making record profits and advancing competing projects. That is the price we pay for letting them own the means of production, plus the ,means of transportation and access to it and the Central production facility limiting access to common production facilities that would be needed for competition to develop. The state should take a 51% equity position in the in-state gasline to Valdez. Then we might be able to produce a fair and proper gasline construction agenda with the partnership of the cartel on the slope. When they all agree to this, well then we could talk tax cuts. What happen to those 4 billions in tax incentives they have received since ACES was enacted? Has it even slowed the decline?...produced a long term plan to reverse the decline? Or are Alaskans supposed to take these in-cahoots oil and gas corporations for the fine upstanding business folks they are? And if we`re going to rip the guts out of a hard-won ACES tax system, we should at least do a proper audit on it`s necessity. We ARE talking billions... up to 400 billion in value to the state over the next 30 years, according to a state agency (AGPA). That much money on the table certainly deserves a proper state audit. I would be hard pressed to understand an argument against an ACES audit instead of gutting it in stacked committee, when by all reasonable measures it is working as designed. With ACES, the state accepted "risk" the companies didn`t want at low prices. ACES accomplished that desire by the companies, as well as protect the state`s interests by insuring the state got a fair share of the high "spikes" in the oil price that occurred regularly. Prior to ACES we couldn`t capture any of those spikes because the taxable value of the oil was figured over a one year average. ACES fixed that. Now we get a fair share of the "high" prices when they occur. Now the companies and their cronies in the House majority want to have MOST if not all of those "spikes" added to their side of the profits ledger, AS WELL as protection should the price crash! Leave ACES alone. Or do a proper audit on it. Don`t allow the industry to write it`s own tax laws..again. Fool me twice shame on me. |
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