Gas line groups outline their priorities
news-miner.com
By DIANA CAMPBELL
Staff Writer
Friday, November 12, 2004 - Two different governmental organizations promoting an all-Alaska route for a natural gas pipeline instead of a trans-Canada route, say they share goals.
An Alaska gas line must provide a maximum amount of jobs for Alaskans, allow community access to reasonably priced natural gas, and should benefit statewide municipal governments, said representatives from the Alaska Gasline Port Authority and from the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority during a meeting of the Alaska Municipal League Thursday.
"The state owns the resource," said Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor Jim Whitaker, who also sits on the port authority, a group that was established by an approved ballot measure in the borough, the City of Valdez and the North Slope Borough. The North Slope Borough dropped from the group this year.
In a session of the AML, Whitaker explained the port authority's progress, Dan Sullivan, a board member of the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority, mapped out that group's work, and Fairbanks Mayor Steve Thompson ended the session with an overview of gas line-related resolutions and recommendations that the Municipal Advisory Group recently passed.
Whitaker said that the Alaska/Canada gas pipeline route from the North Slope to U.S. markets via Chicago would potentially put to work only 2,214 Alaskans during construction. An Alaska-only liquid natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to the Port of Valdez would provide 7,600 Alaska jobs.
The North American Free Trade Agreement further complicates things, he said. "There is no limit to the amount of Canadians who can work on the line," Whitaker said. "Yet not one Alaskan can work in Canada."
The rich Alaska natural gas has many other liquids that can be stripped out of it and manufactured into other petrochemical products, such as Styrofoam, Whitaker and Sullivan agreed. But a Canadian line proposal doesn't provide for any Alaska access to the gas, both said.
And if gas is sold to Alaskans the price should be reasonable and not set on the value of the product once it reaches the Lower 48, Whitaker said.
"Why would we ever let that happen?" he asked.
The port authority's gas line plan calls for $166 million annually that would be divided and sent directly to every local government in the state, Whitaker said. While the Alaska route could give gas producers $1.9 billion in annual profit, the route could provide an additional $627 million to the state, Whitaker said.
The Canada route could give producers $2.7 billion, the state $300 million and nothing to municipalities, he said.
"We are absolutely confident of those numbers," Whitaker said.
The Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority is touting a spur line to Cook Inlet that would veer off the North Slope-to-Valdez line via the Glenn Highway, said Dan Sullivan, a member of ANGDA's board and of the Anchorage Assembly. That spur would add $500 million to $1 billion to the multi-billion dollar project, he said.
Cook Inlet gas, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, supplies most of the Anchorage Bowl and Kenai Peninsula but is dwindling. A spur line would take up the slack, he said.
Gas also could be taken off the pipeline and then barged to Interior villages, providing a cheap source of energy, he said. Cheap gas could also be barged to Alaska coastal communities, he said.
Alaskans didn't benefit from tapping into crude oil as much as they could have from the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, he said. This time things should be done differently to gain more benefits to Alaskans, Sullivan said.
"We have one chance to do it right with these finite resources," he said. "We could have a fund that finances government needs forever."
The Municipal Advisory Group passed eight resolutions addressing local governments affected by the construction of a natural gas line and what they would like Gov. Frank Murkowski and state legislators to include in any contract the state would sign with the gas producers, said Fairbanks Mayor Steve Thompson.
The group was formed under the state's Stranded Gas Development Act.
The resolutions call for state recognition that pipeline communities will have to start preparing for impacts before actual pipeline construction begins. Among those preparations will be increasing school infrastructure, repairing roads, and increasing police and fire services, Thompson said during the session.
The group is also suggesting that payments to local governments be based on the amount of gas flowing through the proposed natural gas pipeline and be indexed for inflation, Thompson said. The local governments are asking that some payments should be made a year prior to construction, during the expected three years of construction and for a year following the pipeline's completion.
"We are insisting on local hire," Thompson said.
Diana Campbell can be reached at 459-7523 or dcampbell@newsminer.com . |
