Comment Letter:
Support of HB110 - Jim Cloud

March 25 Via email

Dear Honored Representatives:

I have been working and living in Alaska since 1976 and have never before seen such a punitive tax structure as ACES. Please support HB110 and help get our oil industry working to find more oil again. Governor Palin’s experiment to punish the oil industry into higher production has obviously backfired on Alaskans and the legislature’s dithering with the gas line for two years has caused Alaska to miss a crucial opportunity that now seems to have closed with the discovery of huge gas reserves in the Lower 48. Now is the time to do whatever is necessary to encourage more drilling on the North Slope and stop the decline of throughput in the TAPS and indeed grow it!

The cumulative tax and royalty burden on the oil industry only makes sense if you are one of those citizens that want to kill the industry and force Americans to walk or ride bicycles everywhere. Please do the right thing for all Alaskans and recognize the mistake made in 2007 and reduce the tax burden to the point that it will be an incentive to drill for new oil reservoirs on Alaska properties and not a disincentive as is currently the case.

Over the past year I have had the opportunity to drive through parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Alberta, and British Columbia where the oil and gas industries are booming and people are working, pipelines are filling and royalties and modest production/income taxes are flowing into government coffers. These areas stand in stark contrast to the industry activity in Alaska.

Please, please, please……I beg you to correct the mistakes made with ACES in 2007 this session!

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
James L. Cloud

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