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Senate Finance to issue RFP on pricing
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Senate Finance Committee has committed $150,000 for a study over the interim of energy pricing issues across the state. As Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, said to the committee April 27, “Alaska ranks first among the 50 states in terms of our energy consumption per capita — unfortunately the price we pay for energy are among the highest in the nation.”
And the cost of energy to Alaskans is growing, Wielechowski said, citing a study indicating that in 2000 low income households in rural Alaska spent 16 percent of their incomes on energy, compared to 47 percent over the last decade.
“This situation is untenable,” he said.
Wielechowski requested a request for proposals, RFP, “to investigate what can be done to ensure Alaskans have access to more affordable and reliable energy supplies.”
He said the RFP should look at factors which cause Alaska’s energy prices “to far exceed national averages,” whether price gouging is occurring and if it is, to what extent, whether a price gouging law should be enacted and any other actions that “can be taken to bring down energy prices for the wellbeing of Alaskan families and the competitiveness and success of our businesses.”
Finance co-Chair Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, said the proposal was being taken up at the request of co-Chair Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel.
Hoffman: solution needed Hoffman said that with oil prices at record highs, the state has saved an amount approaching $15 billion over the past six years, but “we haven’t come up with an adequate solution” for Alaskans who are suffering due to those high prices.
Hoffman said the $150,000 would “continue work in reviewing energy pricing in Alaska over the interim to provide the Legislature with options to consider during the 28th Alaska legislative session,” beginning in January.
Wielechowski, Hoffman and Sen. Joe Thomas, D-Fairbanks, were named to a subcommittee to determine the scope of work to be included in a request for proposals.
Sen. Johnny Ellis, D-Anchorage, noted that legislators have worked with the attorney general and others in the past on this issue.
“We’ve been unsuccessful,” Ellis said, adding that he thought inquiries in the past hadn’t been as wide ranging “as was warranted by the pain and suffering across the state.”
He said with this proposal “we envision going beyond the normal channels, or what we’ve done in the past, to have a more robust aggressive look at this to get somewhere rather than just spinning our wheels with the administration.”
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