This is as good as place as any to post this:
I like how our latest Governor as well as the legislature has started to play a little tougher with the industry as a whole. This lady has her faults like we all do but I can say it was the first Governor I rode next to in coach class on Alaska Airlines before. Pretty nice to look at as well.

Alaska's Palin, Miss Congeniality, Makes Exxon, Conoco Comply

By Joe Carroll and Sonja Franklin

March 3 (Bloomberg) -- Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, a former beauty pageant winner, is succeeding where Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, a former paratrooper and military coup leader, so far has failed.

Palin threatened to evict Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's biggest oil company, and partners BP Plc, Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips from a state-owned gas field, winning their promise to increase Alaska's natural-gas output 17 percent. She raised taxes on oil profits by $1.5 billion a year and rejected industry ownership of a $25 billion pipeline.

Politicians and energy companies are haggling for revenue with oil around $100 a barrel. Exxon and partners say higher taxes may lead to fewer investments in Alaska, home to the second-largest U.S. reserves behind Texas. None has quit the state. Exxon and ConocoPhillips last year left Venezuela rather than accept lower profits when Chavez seized oil fields.

``We've got to play hardball,'' says Republican Palin, 44, in an interview. Alaska relies on the energy industry for 85 percent of tax revenue and 33 percent of jobs. ``The time is right to develop these resources because of the price of fuel.''

Palin's approach may backfire, prompting the largest energy companies to decide that Alaska is no longer profitable, says Ron Denhardt, an analyst at Strategic Energy & Economic Research Inc. in Winchester, Massachusetts. A pullout would leave the state to smaller companies lacking the skill to maximize oil output and tax receipts, he says.

``The economics of huge projects like these have got to look really good for a company to take on that kind of risk,'' Denhardt says. ``We don't know yet if she's asking for too much.''

Evicting Exxon

Exxon, BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron may hear today whether Palin will stick to her threat to rescind the producers' leases covering the Point Thomson field, a site 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Prudhoe Bay that's been dormant since its discovery in the 1970s. The companies are scheduled to present to a Department of Natural Resources hearing in Anchorage a six- year, $1.3 billion plan for starting gas production there.

Palin seeks to auction drilling rights for Point Thomson on Alaska's North Slope to accelerate development of gas reserves with a value of $71 billion at current prices. The state hasn't estimated tax revenue from the plan. Exxon and its partners, which won't disclose their return-on-investment requirements, say they are hamstrung by the lack of a pipeline.

``The state is taking a very aggressive stance,'' says James Bowles, president of ConocoPhillips's Alaska operations. ``We see it as a great risk to the investments we make.''

Miss Wasilla

ConocoPhillips, based in Houston, will scale back its $1 billion Alaska drilling plan for 2008 because of higher taxes, Bowles says.

Doug Suttles, president of BP's Alaska business, said his company is committed to working with the state as oil prices rise. Craig Haymes, the production manager who oversees Exxon's Alaskan operations, declined to be interviewed for this story.

Palin, a mother of four, graduated from high school in Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 6,700 that's 40 miles north of Anchorage. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race starts there each March. She was named Miss Congeniality and Miss Wasilla in 1984, three years before graduating from the University of Idaho. Palin returned home and became mayor in 1996, her highest elected office until being sworn in as governor in December 2006.

Chavez, 53, was jailed in 1992 for leading an unsuccessful military coup and was elected president six years later. He forced six U.S. and European oil companies last year to surrender operating control and majority stakes in fields that pump about $365 million of crude a week.

Discarded Accord

ConocoPhillips and Exxon left the country. Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, BP of London, Norway's StatoilHydro ASA and France's Total SA accepted the arrangement.

Palin says there's a difference between her tactics and the strategy of Chavez, an admirer of Fidel Castro who says he wants to use Venezuela's oil wealth to usher in ``21st-century socialism.''

``We have a democratic government in Alaska, a representative form of government here in America, where we would never take over from industry,'' Palin says. ``But we have the right to demand that provisions in leases are adhered to.''

Venezuela's seizure of property was democratically approved because ``a majority of our people voted for our constitution and our laws,'' Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez says.

Palin took on the energy industry right away, endorsing the Natural Resources department's Nov. 27, 2006, move to evict the four oil companies from Point Thomson after decades of inaction. She discarded a $25 billion pipeline agreement negotiated by her Republican predecessor, Frank Murkowski, calling it too generous.

The accord would have violated the state constitution by freezing corporate natural-gas taxes for more than three decades, says Jerry McBeath, co-author of ``The Political Economy of Oil in Alaska: Multinationals vs. the State,'' to be released this month by Lynne Reinner Publishers in Boulder, Colorado.

``She came into office on an insurgent campaign and took the ethical high road by saying there will be no secret deals,'' McBeath says. ``This is unusual in the history of this state.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Carroll in Chicago at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net ; Sonja Franklin in Calgary at sfranklin6@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: March 3, 2008 00:01 EST