"All I Want For Christmas!"

Or, "The Loss of Self Reliance"

On December 24, 2001 we wrote an editorial satirizing the human greed and mismanagement that was interfering with gas pipeline project advancement.

In those days, Alaskan leaders and their supporters were engaged in the beginning of a decade-long fest of spending gluttony and tax increases to support self gratification of one generation at the expense of those to follow.   -dh

12-24-09 (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 increasing my 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 snow shoveling the neighbors' driveways 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)