Three cheers for Sens. French and Wielechowski for asking Gov. Parnell (June 10 ADN, "Senators challenge …") to prove that Parnell's oil tax cuts actually produced any investment that was not already planned under ACES — a much-needed political question. A more important issue is the repressurization of Prudhoe Bay with Prudhoe power plant flue gas; that repressurization study was ordered by Sir John Browne, then CEO of BP, and completed just before John Browne was outed and never released.
The injection of flue gas is a very effective enhanced oil recovery method, which would allow Prudhoe Bay to produce billions of barrels of additional oil. BP does not want to make the investment because of the time value of money. BP wants to finish selling out and getting out. They used to burn gas just to obtain flue gas to inject and keep oil reservoirs pressurized with flue gas. The political problem is that flue gas repressurization belies all of those like Gov. Parnell, who have been peddling a gas line to the Alaskan voters as if it were real.
— Jerry McCutcheon
Anchorage