Having read Sunday’s Compass piece by Sen. Hollis French and the predictable comment by Paul Jenkins, (both concerning reform to state oil tax structure), I proclaim a clear and decisive victory for Sen. French.

French stated: “We conducted a ten-year real-time experiment in dropping oil taxes on a major North Slope field. Did production go up? No. The Kuparuk field declined at a steady rate of 7 percent throughout that period.”

And he added, from a “Restricted” BP memo, “Alaska’s role in BP’s portfolio is to provide a stable production base and cash flow to fuel growth elsewhere in the business.”

Meanwhile, Jenkins lamented: “(ACES) siphoned off somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion too much from the North Slope industry shareholders for each of the last six years, prompting fat state budget surpluses ...” That is roughly $10 billion extra in state coffers, enough to pay 10,000 oil field workers $100,000 each for 10 years.

Problem is, as Sen. French showed, BP, Exxon et. al use the extra profits to develop fields in other countries, not Alaska.

— Steven Haney

Palmer