Time out.

The first of what may be two or more special sessions of the Alaska legislature adjourned I just as this edition of Alaska Business Monthly went to press. Both Senate and House of Representatives, exhausted and doing their best to avoid flare-ups of tempers stretched to breaking points, put the PPT (percentage of profits tax) and a 45-year-long gas line contract on indefinite hold, and went home, sine die *.

In our view that is the best thing that could have happened. According to seasoned observers, Alaska escaped by the skin of its teeth from what they say could have been certain disaster by agreeing to flawed legislation and an imperfect contract to build North America's history-making huge construction project transporting Alaska's natural gas to Canada and Mid America.

There is no compelling urgency for the legislature to adopt legislation or ratify contractual commitments that nobody yet fully understands except the proposing, internationally powerful North Slope producers and Governor Murkowski, his skillful staff and horrendously expensive consulting strategists.

JUMP, FROG!

It has taken the Governor's staff nearly a year to put together a contract that commits the state. With supporting documentation it runs to more than 1,000 pages. At adjournment the legislature had seen the complex proposal for only about two weeks, but the coup d'etat came only a few days before expiration of the special session: a 100 page revision that started legislative review all over again. In the end, when the Governor called "Frog!" the legislature choose not to jump.

Truth be told, there were gallant efforts by a conference committee to reach a compromise up until the last tick before the clock finally ran out.

RUMPLESTILTSKIN

Experts in both houses of the legislature recognize that the Governor's package of documents are full of IEDs, ** chief among them, aside from a non-negotiable, binding 45-year agreement, is the strategy to accept Alaska's 20 percent equity interest in the line, by taking its share in gas rather than cash. That equates to still more billions of dollars in paid-out cash savings for the producers and a similarly equal potential loss for Alaska. Just like the fairy tale figure Rumplestiltskin who spun flax into gold, Alaska must learn how to turn gas into cash. That will require a huge new, expensive state super agency and gas czar, not to mention paying to transport the gas to market where it will have to compete with guess who? Our producer partners, that's who.

NO NEED TO HURRY NOW

In spite of rhetoric to the contrary, the producers will not abandon an asset like Alaska. Assets are held in safekeeping. Considering what is known about energy supply-and-demand on the world petroleum scene-Iraq, Iran, other Middle East exporters, Russian Far East, Venezuela, Libya, Norway, Indonesia and others, nobody really thinks that a few months more study will quash an Alaska gas contract.

And don't count Murkowski out, even though his disapproval ratings have hit the seventies. He's got his plan down pat and speaks at length extemporaneously and convincingly all across the state. At the end of the day, that's when 22 years as a U. S. Senator really count.

We have never turned out a president during wartime. Can the same hold true for a Governor in the middle of an historic pact? Some say it's usually best to go with the one who brought you.

* Without setting a date to reconvene.

** IED: Improvised Explosive Devices.