The Alaska Legislature is coming back to Juneau.<\/p>\n
Gov. Bill Walker issued an official proclamation Thursday calling the Legislature into special session starting 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 24.<\/p>\n
Unlike the budgetary special session called earlier this year, this session will take place in Juneau.<\/p>\n
On the Legislature\u2019s agenda will be two items dealing with the Alaska LNG project, which intends to build a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to a refinery in Nikiski.<\/p>\n
The first item is the buyout of TransCanada\u2019s 25 percent interest in the gas pipeline. The second is a natural gas reserves tax intended to penalize gas producers if they fail to commit their gas to the pipeline project.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink of this tax as an Alaskan insurance policy for Alaska\u2019s future,\u201d Walker said in a video-recorded announcement. \u201cIf everything goes well, everybody puts gas into the project, then it\u2019ll never be used, it\u2019ll never be needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
As envisioned, the tax would be applied to gas left in the ground. If companies like ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and BP \u2014 the state\u2019s three producing partners in AKLNG \u2014 pledge that gas to the pipeline project, it wouldn\u2019t be taxed.<\/p>\n
Rep. Sam Kito III, D-Juneau, called the gas reserves tax an \u201cinteresting concept.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI had not thought too much about it,\u201d he said Thursday evening, \u201cbut it\u2019s an interesting concept and I\u2019m interested in taking a little closer look at it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that he\u2019s interested to know whether \u201cit\u2019s something that will truly motivate production in a faster fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The TransCanada buyout, estimated to cost $80 million up front, would earn the state an average of $400 million more per year when the pipeline begins operating, according to state estimates.<\/p>\n
TransCanada had been brought onto the AKLNG project (along with the three Big Oil partners) to spread out the cost of the project. In exchange for providing the state\u2019s capital investment and its expertise in large projects, TransCanada is scheduled to receive a percentage of pipeline revenue.<\/p>\n
In the special session announcement, Walker said he expects the buyout of TransCanada to be paid for with money from the state\u2019s Constitutional Budget Reserve.<\/p>\n
Accessing that reserve would require a three-quarters vote of the Alaska House and a three-quarters vote of the Alaska Senate. In an interview earlier this week, Senate President Kevin Meyer, R-Anchorage, expressed some concerns about using the CBR.<\/p>\n
In an emailed statement, Sen. Dennis Egan, D-Juneau, said Juneau is ready to play its constitutional role when the third special session of the 29th Alaska Legislature begins at the end of October.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the time legislators arrive, the last cruise ship will have pulled out, so there are no more excuses,\u201d Egan said in the statement. \u201cJuneau is Alaska\u2019s capital city, and I thank the governor for realizing how important that is. The welcome mat is out, the mics are hot, and Juneau is open for the public\u2019s business.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Alaska Legislature is coming back to Juneau. Gov. Bill Walker issued an official proclamation Thursday calling the Legislature into special session starting 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. Unlike the budgetary special session called earlier this year, this session will take place in Juneau. On the Legislature\u2019s agenda will be two items dealing with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alaska-legislature","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17129"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}