You want “maverick?” She’ll give you maverick, and perhaps annoy some conservatives along the way.

Days after she was sworn in as governor, Sarah Palin began to clean house at the department of natural resources, firing and demoting several top officials and eventually appointing a new director at the agency that oversees the energy companies that provide the state with 85% of its revenue.

The shake-up was an early sign that this newly elected Republican governor was not like any of her predecessors — she was determined not to cave in to the energy industry, the state’s lifeblood.
“The governor is not a negotiator. She is a non-negotiator. She draws lines in the sand,” said Tim Bradner, an oil industry analyst for Platts Oilgram and the Alaska Journal of Commerce.

Palin, in her inaugural speech, had another way of putting it: “I will unambiguously, steadfastly and doggedly guard the interests of this great state as a mother naturally guards her own,” she said.

Palin’s willingness to take on powerful interests in her state drew the attention of Sen. John McCain, who has praised his running mate as a reformer.

Since becoming governor in December 2006, Palin has tripled production taxes on oil and seized control of a proposed $30-billion natural gas pipeline from the traditional oil giants.

The Palin administration now stands in a nerve-racking faceoff with the multibillion-dollar oil industry interests that have for 40 years been the bedrock of the state’s politics and economy. Who blinks first — Palin, or companies like BP Alaska, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil — will determine who controls transport of Alaska’s massive untapped gas resources and future tax revenues for a state dependent on petroleum revenues for 85% of its budget.

Most analysts are predicting that it won’t be Palin who yields.

“She has been more adversarial with the producers than any previous governor,” said Democratic state Rep. Mike Doogan, whom Palin courted — with cupcakes — to power her oil program through the Legislature this year.

Palin’s showdown with the oil companies has earned her enormous public acclaim but alienated her from all but a handful of Republican legislators and forced her to develop working alliances with Democrats.