Dear readers:

Most importantly, Merry Christmas, and may we all take time to remember the reason for the season.  After all, where would we be without the founders of our nation and the framers of our Constitution who attributed creation of the United States of America to the Creator of mankind?

And why would we be gathering tonight for dinner, presents and celebration without primarily celebrating the birth of God’s Son who became the Savior of the world, if only we would accept Him? 

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Fiscal Crisis, courtesy: Daily Beast

Today we offer you our 2001 Christmas editorials.  

Please note that an Alaska fiscal crisis, talk of yet higher oil taxes, officials demonizing the state’s major investors and gas pipeline angst consumed all oxygen from legislative hearing rooms, news rooms, radio/television studios and living rooms in that era, as they do now.  

Makes a fella wonder if Franklin’s pronouncement is not especially true for Alaskan leaders and those who elect them:

Experience is a dear teacher; a fool will have no other.

-dh

December 22/23, 2001 Commentary

 

12-22/23 (Weekend): Regarding the ominous fiscal reports from Alaska in last week’s/weekend’s news (which must impact gas pipeline investor opinions), here is the Kenai Peninsula Clarion’s view:  “The longer Alaskans avoid the difficult choices involved in a long-range financial plan, the worse the pain is going to be. The longer we wait, the fewer options we will have.”  There is also this Clarion letter-to-the-editor: “It’s time for Alaskans to realize that if we want a “future” some tough decisions have to be made now!”     *     Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (Re: Rep. Jim Whitaker)- Whitaker will also keep pushing his proposal from last year to make the companies that hold state leases for the gas on the North Slope pay a combined total of at least a billion dollars a year (Underline added) to state coffers if they do not soon bring the gas to market. … He is reviving his 2-year-old proposal to create a state-owned corporation to finance and own a pipeline to bring Alaska natural gas to market if it is economically feasible, which Whitaker insists it is. 

Wondering….

Northern Gas Pipelines wonders so many things as 2001 makes way for a new year of opportunity..  We wonder how rational state leaders on the edge of fiscal crisis could even take time to consider investment in a multi-billion dollar pipeline.  If the money were available, would there be a budget crisis?  If investment money magically appeared, why would politicians rush to invest it in a pipeline when the experts say the feasibility is unproven?  We’ve also stood in amazement over the last year as several political leaders competed for attention in criticizing the very producers who provide the majority of state revenue and have the ability to invest in a pipeline and other projects.  We wonder what politicians hope to gain by again pushing for a new, $1 billion/year tax on the gas producers if  it is not feasible to produce the gas.  We wonder, in the face of fiscal crisis, why Alaskan politicians are not talking about “incentives”, “improving Alaska’s investment climate”, “tax stability”, “regulatory clarity”, “public/private partnership”.  Lacking budget discipline and free-market creativity, Alaska’s elected leaders at all levels seem fixed on bluffing companies right up to the edge of the 2004 fiscal cliff, hoping to earn more general fund revenues or a favored pipeline route–before it’s too late–with intimidation.  We wonder why we’ve seen so many sticks and not one carrot.  We wonder if free enterprise is still alive and well on the Last Frontier.  We wonder if elected leaders have any idea of the negative seeds they might be planting now, as companies forecast multi-year spending priorities in Alaska and elsewhere.  Finally, we don’t wonder that Alaska’s reputation is at risk.    -dh 

See yesterday’s related gasline editorial: “Now Is Not The Time”

Christmas Commentaries, 2001

Gasline, oil taxes, fiscal crisis, and more….

 

12-25-01:  Hallelujah.   *   FYI: Yesterday’s commentary (below) attracted about 2 dozen emails from friends throughout North America.  Thankfully, all expressed warm season’s greetings.  But about half of our speed readers had obviously only read the letter from “Wishing” to Santa, and not Santa’s reply following it.  Each letter represents only half of the message.    

12-24-01 (Christmas Eve):  Gas pipeline news this week is light as all gas pipeline stakeholder thoughts turn to home.  Before news afresh begins breaking after the holidays, perhaps it would be well to spend a quality moment or two reflecting on where we’ve been this year and where we wish to be in 2002.  After all, our millions of individual decisions in the coming year will produce some grand, cosmic formula revealing the future of northern gas pipelines.  -dh

“All I Want for Christmas”

Dear Santa:

I’d like an Alaska gas pipeline for Christmas.  It should be in place, producing money by 2004, please, in time to supply 1/4 of Alaska’s $1 billion+ budget deficit; and let our politicians balance the rest without increasingmy taxes or reducing my services.  I’d like the pipeline to be ‘diversified’, too.  It should go to a Fairbanks ‘HUB’ (where I’d like a new petrochemical industry established by someone for some market).  I’d also like someone to put an inexpensive gas distribution line to every home in Fairbanks.  To be fair, I’d like someone to take propane from the HUB and ship it to 230 Alaska villages at a reasonable cost, somehow.  Then, I’d like someone to build a line from the HUB on down to Valdez and arrange for Tokyo Gas to sign a 20 year, “take or pay”  contract at a price high enough to pay for the pipeline as well as another petrochemical facility in Valdez.  To take care of my friends in Southeast Alaska, I’d like propane and maybe LNG to be provided by barges or small cryogenic tankers to all our coastal citizens at a reasonable price, by someone.  Since Southcentral Alaska may be running short of Cook Inlet gas, I’d like someone to build a branch of the pipeline from the Fairbanks HUB down to Anchorage.  See, that would displace enough gas that the Kenai Peninsula would retain adequate supplies for its residential / industrial users for another 20 years.  Lastly, I would like for most of the gas to move from the HUB on down the Alaska Highway to make sure that the folks in the Lower 48 have plenty, but I’d want to make sure there were enough liquid gasses in the high pressure line that we could profitably supply Alberta with some of the petrochemical feedstock she needs to be supportive.  Oh, and I almost forgot, please make the price of gas high enough so we can afford subsidies, generous rights-of-way payments to 10,000 landowners, and still have plenty of money for our state government and please build a separate Mackenzie Valley Pipeline for Canada. 

And, I’d rather not have the gas produced at all unless it’s done my way. 

Sincerely,

“Wishing”

P.S.  If you have money left over, could we have some to invest as equity in the gas pipeline and would you please make sure we get at least a 12-15% return on our investment?

___________________________________________________

Dear Wishing:

All fathers, including Father Santa, instinctively want their children to have all that they wish for.  However, one responsibility a father has is to lovingly tell his children that we don’t always get everything we wish for at Christmas.  Sometimes, you get a present you think you’d rather not have and it turns out the be the best one after all.  (See P.S., below.)  I don’t know if that will be the case this year, but on this Christmas Eve, I can now divulge your gifts.

1.  You will be blessed–more than most–with another year of freedom and life in the wondrous North.

2.  You will be given intelligence, courage, friends, armaments and vast resources.

3.  You will be given the freedom to break your own trail, to direct your own future path in the wonderful frontier before you.

4.  You will be blessed with the politicians that you, yourself, choose to help lead the quest.

5.  The above, basic gifts will enable you through your own wisdom, ingenuity and integrity to successfully confront your challenges.  Success, the greatest gift, will be highly savored for you will have earned it and you will pass this knowledge to your heirs.  Your failure, also shouldered by your children, will only come with misuse of the gifts.

My greatest hope for you is that you embrace the true spirit of Christmas, use well what you have been given, make good decisions, treat everyone with respect, teach your own children well, and endeavor toward ‘endless progress’.  Obtained as you have so presumptuously wished, the presents you requested would not delight you, would not eliminate the fundamental budget problems you have created, would shackle free enterprise and deliver the generations following you into debt and misery.  They represent a child’s irrational thinking, depending as they do on the imprudent acts of others and requiring no effort or risk on your part.

Lovingly,

Santa

P.S.  One Christmas long, long ago, I asked for a new bicycle and a 410 shotgun.  Being a poor 11-year-old did not prevent the dreaming.  After a humble family service around our Nativity scene, wise Father gave me a snow shovel and a box of shotgun shells, my only presents.  I did not appreciate these gifts at the time, but by spring I had earned enough from the neighbors to buy a new bike and a used shotgun.  To this day, I love my Father as much as I respect him; and, he has never worried that I would ever confront a reasonable challenge I could not overcome.  That year I emerged into the real world, began absorbing the true Christmas message and took the first small steps toward a lifelong appreciation for free enterprise.  (Additional reference: Voice of the Times, by William J. Tobin)