Senate committee will meet on contract

The Alaska Senate’s Special Committee on Natural Gas Development has scheduled two roundtable discussions on the proposed gas pipeline fiscal contract.

The committee will meet July 6 at 9 a.m. at the Carlson Center in Fairbanks and July 7, possibly continuing to July 8, in Anchorage. The location for the Anchorage meeting had not been announced when Petroleum News went to press.

The committee held two days of roundtable discussions June 7-8 with legislators, consultants, the administration and the North Slope gas pipeline project proponents, BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil. Chairman Ralph Seekins, R-Fairbanks, said when those meetings wrapped up that the committee would like to continue the discussions in the interim between special sessions.

The first special session of 2006 ended June 8 and Gov. Frank Murkowski has called the Legislature back for another special session beginning July 12. On the agenda for the July special session are a production profits tax and changes to the Alaska Stranded Gas Development Act.

—Petroleum News