Openness in gas line negotiations is a critical mistake

Transparency and openness can often hurt during negotiations. If the state negotiates openly and transparently, then you have 650,000 critics versus a team of skilled oil industry negotiators. Open negotiations put the state at a distinct disadvantage.

Can you imagine the president negotiating with world leaders out in the open?

Getting a pipeline will take closed negotiations with skilled state negotiators working toward an outcome beneficial to the oil companies and the state.

That's it. It's not that difficult.

Sen. Lesil McGuire wisely recommended the process of getting our gas to market by moving into a negotiating phase. Under the Palinista regime, there has never been an ounce of negotiating with anyone.

What did Palinista leader and Revenue Commissioner Pat Galvin say to McGuire's call for negotiations?

"We see no value in a closed-door, private negotiation."

Remember Palinista gas team head honcho Marty Rutherford has said in the past we are outgunned when it comes to negotiating with producers.

Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you. If the people we have hired to negotiate with the oil industry say they are not up to the job, should we not find somebody who can do the job?

It seems like the billions of dollars floating around Juneau would be enough to go out and hire a negotiator somewhere. I mean how much can they cost. We are multiple billionaires.

We have the budget of a small country; shouldn't we hire the best negotiators in the world? Countries negotiate with the oil industry all the time. Who are they hiring?

But if negotiations are ever to lead to a working partnership, both parties must have some level of trust in each other.

Former Anchorage Mayor Rick Mystrom made an astoundingly revealing observation on my show recently about the Palinista gas line team. Mystrom said if you can't trust the people across the table from you, then you should abandon your partnership with them.

The former mayor was not saying we can't trust the leaseholders of our gas; he was saying the Palinista regime clearly does not.

I ask you, would you partner with someone in business you don't trust?

And this, my friends, is what AGIA, ACES and Tom Irwin's Point Thompson decision is all about. Ending our partnership with the leaseholders of our gas and going to all-out war with them.

Think about it. Who is the biggest supporter and the loudest and most vocal mouthpiece of AGIA? Ultra left-wing legislator Les Gara. A man who obviously has little trust or affection for the oil industry.

The following is true and without dispute. The producers will never commit to shipping their gas through a pipeline in which they cannot control cost overruns. Not when the construction project is the largest in North American history.

This saga will and always has come down to the state negotiating with its business partners and leaseholders of our gas.

The leaseholders are betting $600 million over the next two years that the state will eventually return to a partnership with them and give them tax guidelines and certainty needed to make the project economically viable.

The good news is AGIA doesn't seem to do anything to stop or even slow us down from getting to that point.

AGIA is nothing more than government using cash it took by force from someone in the private sector who worked hard to earn it by producing something of value, and then doing nothing more than wasting it as if it had no value.

The sad truth is, when this current crop of legislators pass AGIA, they are sending a clear message to Alaskans. As far we are concerned, state money has little or no value.

Dan Fagan is a radio talk show host on KFQD, 750 AM. E-mail dan@kfqd.com.