One of Sarah Palin's signature accomplishments in her two-and-a-half year stint as Alaska governor is coming under renewed scrutiny and could have implications for the 2012 Republican presidential race - should she decide to run.

As the Alaska legislature prepares to convene for its annual 90-day session beginning on January 18, an Anchorage Daily News report on Friday revealed growing momentum among state lawmakers to roll back the tax on oil profits that Palin pushed through in 2007.

Dubbed Alaska's Clear and Equitable Share (ACES), the oil tax hike was extremely popular among state Democrats and received enough Republican support to become law.

Palin was widely credited at the time for being the first Alaska governor to effectively take on the oil companies that wield enormous influence in the state, and she alluded to the achievement frequently during her 2008 vice presidential run.

But a growing chorus of Alaska Republicans who supported ACES when it was enacted four years ago - including current Gov. Sean Parnell, who was then Palin's lieutenant governor - are now advocating for changes to the law amid concerns that it has hampered investment in the oil business that funds about 90 percent of the state's budget.

"I think we did get it wrong, and we've got the figures and it's a lot of money," Republican state Sen. Tom Wagoner, who voted in favor of ACES in 2007, told the Anchorage Daily News.

Though ACES served as the cornerstone for the maverick persona that Palin touted in 2008, the law could become a double-edged sword should she decide to launch a presidential campaign later this year.

A substantial contingent of fiscal conservatives in Alaska panned the tax hike from the beginning, and future Republican primary opponents could use it to question the extent to which Palin's small-government rhetoric matches her record.

On Friday, former Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski, who lost his 2006 re-election bid to Palin in a Republican primary, wrote an op-ed in the Juneau Empire to advocate changing the oil tax system that Palin enacted. The tax plan that Murkowski initiated before ACES replaced it was widely criticized for giving too many concessions to the oil companies, but Murkowski suggested that his plan was now being vindicated.

"Alaska was in the mid range of oil tax regimes for competitiveness under the Murkowski Administration, but enacted the highest marginal tax rate in the world under Palin," Murkowski wrote. "Alaskans simply cannot compete with the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas exploration and development capital by imposing a tax that is twice the amount charged there."

A Palin aide did not respond to a request for comment on the former governor's view of potential changes to ACES and the uncertain status of the natural gas pipeline project, which was her other signature achievement in office.

The Alaska Dispatch reported last month that a federal agency forecasts that construction for the gas pipeline will not become economically feasible until about 2035.

Andrew Halcro, a former Republican state legislator who ran for governor against Palin in 2006 and has since remained a vocal critic of her, said that he expects both ACES and the gas pipeline project to become problems for Palin if she runs for president.

"Even as governor in a short period of time, she made decisions based on populism rather than practicality," Halcro told RealClearPolitics. "In another year, these things are going to become very clear, so time is not on her side, as far as assessing her time as governor."