Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska's popular elder stateswoman, on Wednesday cited a litany of reasons why she was happy that the august upper chamber of Congress had beat back efforts to eliminate tax breaks enjoyed by Big Oil.
In a Senate floor speech, Murkowski congratulated the failure of the Democratic-sponsored (and Obama supported) Close Big Oil Loopholes Act for about two minutes, before delving into the Republican-sponsored Offshore Production and Safety Act, described as an environmentally-safe, pro-development national energy bill.
Here's what she said:
Murkowski pitted the legislation she was cosponsoring on offshore production starkly against the failed tax credit elimination, claiming that it was pointless to "punish" the oil and gas industry for the spiraling costs of their products (currently Americans spend 12 percent of their disposable income on them). It was more commonsense, she said, to follow the supply-side argument that more production would impact demand.
There is recent evidence to support her argument; just ask BP and ConocoPhillips, who failed miserably at their Alaska natural gas pipeline project, officials say, because of the (currently) poor economics for our resource.
Unregulated shale gas production in the Lower 48 has flooded the markets with cheap, local natural gas reserves, drastically lowering the price of natural gas and "dooming" the prospect for Alaska's bounty.
On the flip side of the coin, Alaska's oil reserves don't face that sort of competition, although it is possible that by the time offshore oil production finally gets geared up in a way that would meaningfully impact fuel prices--and that could be 10 years down the road--engineers will have found other less-finite fuel sources for combustible engines.