The are the same people who want you to trust them with ANWR
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner


Governor keeps lid on gas line contract
By R.A. DILLON
Staff Writer


Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - JUNEAU--The Murkowski administration refused to comply Tuesday with a Juneau Superior Court order to make public the terms of a natural gas contract with the state's largest oil companies.

Judge Larry Weeks agreed with Sen. Hollis French, D-Anchorage, that there was no reason for Gov. Frank Murkowski to keep the contract between the administration and Exxon Mobil, BP and ConocoPhillips confidential.

Weeks ruled that the governor must release any portion of the 300-page contract that the administration and the producers are in agreement on by Tuesday afternoon.

The attorney general's office responded that the contract includes the fiscal terms and other proprietary information of a deal to commercialize the North Slope's 35 trillion cubic feet of known gas reserves with the producers.

Assistant State Attorney General Larry Ostrovsky argued the contract was still being negotiated and therefore the oil companies had not agreed to the terms of the contract.

In his response to the court, Ostrovsky argued that the companies were unwilling to reveal proprietary information in the contract.

"The producers do not consider themselves to have agreed to any individual provisions, and ... reserve the right to go back and renegotiate any particular provision in light of the final negotiation," he wrote in a response to the court.

Calls to spokesmen for BP and ConocoPhillips were not returned Tuesday.

Mark Morones, state Department of Law spokesman, said the administration could not release the contract until it was agreed upon by all parties.

However, the governor has said he will release the contract today regardless of whether the Legislature passes a controversial oil tax rewrite that is supposed to be included in the gas contract.

"The governor is confident he will have an agreement" today, Morones said.

French said he was disappointed by the administration's response and said he looked forward to seeing whether the contract is released on the governor's schedule.

"I'm very disturbed that the governor and the administration are defying a court order," he said. "It certainly calls into question what the governor said back in February."

Murkowski announced in February that he had reached an agreement with ConocoPhillips on the fiscal terms of a deal on gas. Soon after, he announced that Exxon and BP had also agreed to the terms of the contract.

Morones said that was only an agreement in principle and did not rise to the level of an official contract, therefore the contract does not exist until all parties agree on the terms.

French sued last week to see the contract, arguing that he needed to see it to understand how it fit into the oil tax rewrite being considered by the Legislature. "It makes you suspicious of what's happening on the Third Floor to the contract in response to the oil tax rewrite," French said.