Pumping Up TAPS: Stedman’s position softening, interested in legacy field incentives

Editor’s note: The following is an update to the Stedman sidebar on page 53.

Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka and co-chair of the powerful Finance Committee, was surveyed in early December by the Associated Press, along with the 19 other members of the Alaska Senate, about Gov. Sean Parnell’s legislation to cut oil production taxes in the upcoming legislative session. The House has already passed the legislation, HB 110, but Stedman and other senators wanted more information before they moved to change the state’s production tax.

Stedman told AP that he plans to look at range of issues, including progressivity, tax credits and whether the state should continue taxing oil and gas production together.

Stedman also is interested in potential incentives to boost incremental production from Prudhoe and Kuparuk, AP reported. He said those fields, and possibly Alpine, are key to increased production through the trans-Alaska oil pipeline that delivers North Slope crude to tidewater.

Work has continued on the oil tax issue during the interim, and the upcoming 90-day session, which starts in January, is ample to move legislation, if that’s what lawmakers decide is best for the state, he said.

“But we want to be careful we don‘t make the situation worse,” Stedman said.

In addition to co-chairing Finance, Stedman sits on the Resources Committee, which probably will hear the governor’s bill, and is a member of the Rules Committee, which will have the final decision on moving it to the Senate floor for a vote.

—Kay Cashman