No Up Side

"Alaska's fiscal regime is broken" According to Dan Seckers, a tax expert with Exxon Mobil.  He went on to characterize the ACES tax rules as having "no upside" due to progressivity.

From 360north.org:

It's all about tax policy

From Platts (LINK):

An ExxonMobil executive said Tuesday the producer is optimistic that an Arctic natural gas pipeline will get built despite competition from shale, but said a major sticking point remains Alaska's tax and royalty policy.

"We take a long-term view on Alaska," said Steve Kirchhoff, ExxonMobil Gas and Power Marketing's vice president for the Americas. "The shale definitely does enter into that equation but a real fundamental issue at this point is we need to be able to sit down with the state and work through appropriate fiscal regimes that are going to make this work against a range of price forecasts."

ExxonMobil partnered with TransCanada on one of two proposals for a massive 48-inch-diameter pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Alberta.

We're more or less back where we started 3 or 4 years ago. It's always been about tax rates vs. market rates.