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The Alaska Support Industry Alliance seeks free-flowing oil in 2000 Hitting the pavement with the views of oil and gas support industries boosts the group’s membership while influencing the state’s future Dawnell Smith PNA Contributing Writer
With grassroots advocacy as its tool, the 21-year-old Alaska Support Industry Alliance intends to fight for free-flowing oil, a balanced budget and streamlined regulations in the new century.
Since its start in 1979, when a handful of business people rallied to support the sale of oil and gas leases in the Beaufort Sea, the group has had a significant stake in, and influence on, such issues as land access, the maintenance of transportation systems and fiscal policy.
It will focus on many of these issues at its 17th annual Oil and Gas Conference Jan. 28 at the Sheraton Anchorage Hotel. Confirmed speakers include Dick Olver, BP Amoco’s executive vice president of exploration and production; Robert Allison, chairman and CEO of Anadarko Petroleum Company; Mark Hamilton, president of the University of Alaska; and Ann-Louise Hittle, director of world oil, Cambridge Energy Research Association.
A growing membership The non-profit Alliance consists of more than 350 oil and gas support businesses, has 21 board directors and has sustained a growth rate of 10 percent the last few years.
“When you are politically active and active in the community and people see you’re doing something, then they are more interested in joining,” said Mary Shields, general manager of Northwest Technical Services, Alliance member and Alliance president from 1989 to 1990.
Shields gave credit for much of the group’s growth to Karen Cowart, the Alliance’s general manager. “Karen Cowart is phenomenal,” said Shields, who emphasized Cowart’s ability to promote the group.
Alliance members include individuals and a variety of transportation, wholesale, retail and professional companies like VECO Corp., Parker Drilling Company of Alaska, Lynden Inc. and Kanas Telecom Inc.
More than 75 percent of the member companies employ fewer than 50 employees; nearly a fourth have fewer than five employees. Together, they employ some 30,000 people, of which 90 percent are Alaskan residents.
Many members also join groups like the Resource Development Council, a non-profit group similar to the Alliance in its pro-development stance. Unlike the RDC, which promotes a wide range of industries, from fishing and tourism to mining, the Alliance focuses on extraction industries.
“We have always been much more pro-active legislatively and much more aggressive,” said Shields.
Urging tax relief and oil development Since its inception, the Alliance has focused on ensuring a stable tax environment, the availability of resource-rich lands and the reform of regulatory and statutory processes.
Generally, the Alliance wants to see a balanced budget, area-wide lease sales and complete access to areas like the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Specific projects have included:
—A campaign to repeal the state’s Economic Limit Factor severance tax incentive for Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk in the late 1980s. In the end, the repeal went through and the oil industry has paid an additional $200 million a year in taxes as a result, according to the group’s 1999 Annual Report.
—An effort to defeat legislation in 1994 that would have extended the statute of limitations for retroactive tax assessments on oil companies from three to 18 years.
—Promotion of legislation to stimulate development of smaller oilfields like those in Cook Inlet.
—Support of an environmental self-auditing system that passed into law in 1998.
Clarifying budget solutions Over the past decade, promoting sound fiscal policy was among the Alliance’s core missions. As a result, it conducted a survey of its members last March, and found that the majority supported budget cuts, the use of a portion of Permanent Fund earnings, a limit on Permanent Fund dividends and a sales tax. Members, however, resoundingly opposed an income tax.
The Alliance will probably make the state budget the dominate priority again in 2000, said Shields, but right now, board members, directors and staff are still formulating and refining the group’s strategy.u
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