Alaska House considers setting up special gas pipeline committee

Larry Persily

Petroleum News government affairs editor

Alaska’s state House leadership is considering setting up a special committee on natural gas pipelines, but also is thinking about just dropping the idea.

House Republican leaders introduced a resolution March 31 to establish a special gas line committee but took no action on the measure.

“We’re still kicking it around,” said House Rules Chair Norm Rokeberg, R-Anchorage. “There’s been some informal discussion whether we’re going to move forward or not.”

House Resolution 9 points to the importance of attracting a developer to build a pipeline to move North Slope natural gas to market, creating jobs and tax and royalty revenues for the state. And because a gas line is so important to the state, the resolution says a special House committee should consider whether legislation is needed in the final five weeks of this session or next year to “enhance the best interests of the state.”

The resolution, if approved by the full House, would leave it up to the House speaker to select the committee members and designate a chairperson.

The committee also would serve as a liaison between the full House and the governor’s office during state negotiations under the Stranded Gas Development Act, where the administration is talking with companies about a long-term fiscal contract setting out payments in lieu of state and municipal taxes on a potential gas line project.

The Stranded Gas Act already specifies the joint House-Senate Legislative Budget and Audit Committee should take the lead in reviewing any draft fiscal contract for a pipeline and, separate from that committee, House and Senate leaders last month named four legislators to serve as informal liaisons to the administration for updates on Stranded Gas Act negotiations.

A special House committee on gas lines might be too much, Rokeberg said. In addition to maybe not needing another committee on the same subject, the Senate has declined to join in establishing a special joint committee on gas lines, he said.

House Republicans need to discuss the issue further, Rokeberg said, and may decide to drop the idea of a special committee and rely on the joint Budget and Audit Committee that already has funding and the authority to hire consultants.

“Rather than reinvent the wheel, it may be a better way to go,” he said.