Alaska tax chief joins gas line negotiations

Dickinson joins Clark on state negotiating team, says he won’t return to state government after negotiations concluded

Matt Volz

Associated Press Writer

Alaska’s tax director will work full time on gas pipeline negotiations as the Murkowski administration tries to close financial terms for a gas line by a self-imposed fall deadline.

Dan Dickinson will leave the Alaska Department of Revenue’s Tax Division on July 11. On July 1, Dickinson said he is moving to the negotiating team because of Gov. Frank Murkowski’s “aggressive schedule to get the negotiations going.”

The state is talking with three separate applicants under Alaska’s Stranded Gas Act: the producer group of BP PLC, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp.; TransCanada; and the Alaska Gasline Port Authority.

“The path is to get a deal put together between the producers and the state under the Stranded Gas Act,” Dickinson said.

Asked if that meant the producers’ application was being viewed as the most likely to be approved, Dickinson said all three applications were in play but any deal would have to include the producers in some way.

The producers own the rights to 90 percent of the known gas reserves on the North Slope.

Dickinson said proposals like the port authority’s plan to run a line to Valdez were interesting ideas, “but that doesn’t get gas to market.”

The producers favor a route through Canada to markets in the Midwest, and have called the plan to pipe the gas to Valdez too expensive.

TransCanada proposes a pipeline that would tie into its Canadian network.

Dickinson: ‘Gas has to be part of the deal’

“Clearly the gas has to be part of the deal and some of the things TransCanada brought forward could be part of the deal,” Dickinson said.

Dickinson said he will continue working with the producers and their application in his new role.

“People are looking at how to break impasses, how to re-conceptualize things so both sides can find where there is common ground,” Dickinson said.

Dickinson is the second recent addition to the state’s negotiating team. Earlier this week, Murkowski announced that his chief of staff, Jim Clark, was going to lead the negotiators.

Murkowski spokeswoman Becky Hultberg called Clark and Dickinson “the closers” and said they were brought in because of the increased pace of negotiations.

Many state lawmakers had hoped to be presented with a contract proposal this legislative session. When that didn’t materialize, Murkowski said he planned to have a deal made by fall.

“They certainly have been making regular progress, and they are getting to the point where they will be delivering something to the Legislature by November,” said Deputy Revenue Commissioner Tom Boutin.

Dickinson acknowledged that the governor may be frustrated with the negotiations, spurring the need to bring in his new “closers,” but then he said frustration may not be the right way to put it.

“The governor is very anxious and he wants to make sure the right resources are being brought to the job,” Dickinson said. “He’s going to be the final closer.”

Tax Division Deputy Director Larry Meyers will become the division’s acting director. Boutin said no date has been set to permanently fill the position.

Dickinson said he does not plan to return to state government once the negotiations are concluded.