Who monitors the Charter Agreement with BP and CP?

[Friday, Feb. 13, 2009, 5pm Thai time] I passed on my post Charter for the Development of the Alaska North Slope, which contains a copy of the Agreement, to my Alaska State Representative Berta Gardner on Feb. 3. Three hours later she sent my questions to the Department of Revenue, but wasn't impressed with the response and sent me this message that afternoon:

Well this afternoon I received a packet of "answers" from DOR but they really don't answer your questions.

What did I ask? Well, I'd found and posted BP's 2007 Report on their compliance with the Charter for 2006, which was three pages and said almost nothing, so I asked a few questions, just focused on the Charitable Contributions section. (Other sections probably have even greater consequences and others should be follow those up.)

1. Who monitors these contributions to be sure that they are making the contributions required?
2. How do members of the public find this out?
3. Are they contributing what they are required to contribute?
4. Are they contributing more than they are required to contribute?
5. If not, can either company seriously claim to make charitable contributions? This was simply a business deal, a required cost of doing business in Alaska and not really charitable donations. (Well, I wasn't exactly expecting a technical answer to this one.)
   
6. Who is on these boards and are the meetings announced and public?

Two days later, Feb. 5, 2009, I got this email from Rep. Gardner:

We've decided to ask for "legislative research" report on this. I expect it to take awhile but we'll let you know when we have more info.

Today, I got the following message from Rep. Gardner, that Pete Kelly doesn't think the Charter Agreement is binding.

I think you'll be interested to know that in the University budget subcommittee meeting today, Pete Kelly, the legislative liaison, mentioned the loss of Charters funds from the oil industry. When I asked him about that he said he understood that the donations were not mandatory, that the Charter agreement did not have the force of law.

We do have the legislative research request filed but may have to wait awhile for answers. It's a lower priority than requests having to do with pending legislation.

Rep. Gardner also pointed out that

it was Pete Kelly, not his brother Mike, who is a Representative.

My immediate gut reaction was, well, this is not that kind of blog. It's shocking to think someone believes the charter is voluntary. But then I wondered, who is Kelly the legislative liaison for? This is even more shocking. He represents the University!!! Google got me this bit of information from 2008 UAF Faculty Senate meeting minutes says:

Brian Barnes is working on it in Juneau this week, talking to commissioners, as well as our legislative liaison Pete Kelly, too.

Later Rep. Gardner confirmed he is with the University.

OK, the oil companies earned less money last year, so according to the formulas, the Univeristy will get less money from the agreement. But that doesn't make the agreements voluntary. Maybe I'm wrong, but what was the point of the State signing an agreement with the oil companies outlining conditions for BP's purchase of ARCO if the conditions are not mandatory?

Now, there are some parts of the agreement where the language is fuzzy. The Alaska Hire section, for instance, says, "BP and ARCO agree that . . . they will continue and expand their commitment to the people of Alaska to utilize a voluntary program to employ residents of Alaska and to utilize Alaska busineses." The way they are supposed to implement that is to obey all pertinant laws. Well, they have to do that anyway. The other requirements - advertise in Alaska, etc. - are pretty loose.

But other sections, including the charitable contributions, seem to me to be pretty straight forward with objective measures of whether they achieved their commitments.

Things such as conditions of data availability, access to facilities, purchases from qualified producers, and divestiture of TAPS and feeder pipeline.

And environmental commitments such as cleanup of abandoned sites, of empty barrels, of existing BP and ARCO sites, closure of inactive reserve pits, commitments to North Slope spill response, and on and on.

What's the point of negotiating an agreement such as this if it's just voluntary?

The whole agreement is available at the previous post on this topic.


Now maybe this was just a misunderstanding, but I would hope the University liaison to the legislature doesn't usually leave State Reps understanding something that wasn't what he really said.