June 01, 2020
Monday AM

Take Close Aim at your foot and pull the trigger Matt Tomter, owner of Matanuska Brewing. Those TV ads you are running for BIG OIL are gonna come back to bite you.

I was once as naive as you, then I got elected to the legislature, and someone showed me BP's real profit numbers. BP was making five times as much as they were making anywhere else for doing the same thing, all while telling us legislators that they needed a tax break. 

Alaska's wealth was being stolen. It was obvious to anyone willing to read BP's statements to stockholders. But BP Cool-Aid had drenched the halls of the capitol, and most of my fellow legislators would pretend they didn't get it when I showed them BP's statements.

In 1979 BP told their stockholders they were making so much money in Alaska they could not invest it all in exploration. Their stated plan was to buy up other energy companies to grow BP. Over the next 30 years, BP grew from the world's 13th largest oil company to the world's 3rd largest.

BP's stated worldwide annual rate of return on investments is 19%. BP's Alaska investments have never returned under 100% per year. BP's over the top profits rightfully belonged to Alaskans, and we would be well-positioned to weather today's storm had we received them.

The oil companies will take everything we are dumb enough to give them and leave nothing if we let them. Amongst the carnage they leave will be a bankrupt Matanuska Brewing Company and a thousand other Bankruptcies.

Ray Metcalfe
Anchorage, Alaska

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Received May 23, 2020 - Published June 01, 2020

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