Former governor says it's time to push for gas line
by Dan Fiorucci - Monday, June 20, 2005
ktuu.com
Anchorage, Alaska - It was 28 years ago today that oil began flowing through the trans-Alaska pipeline. Now, 14 billion barrels later, that oil is selling at record prices, almost $57 a barrel this afternoon.
It took political arm-twisting to get the trans-Alaska pipeline built. And former Gov. Wally Hickel says that's just what it will take to get the long-stalled natural gas pipeline built.
Back in 1969, President Richard Nixon had tapped Gov. Hickel to be Secretary of the Interior. Hickel recalls the day an oil executive walked into his office and said the trans-Alaska oil pipeline would never happen.
Hickel said he angrily responded to that executive by saying, "Damn it, we're gonna make it happen." He says it's that kind of fire that's lacking in the current administration.
"When the producers refused to sell, the state of Alaska should have stepped in," Hickel told business people at the Make It Monday forum.
Hickel said Alaska missed a golden opportunity last month when the nation's second-largest natural gas wholesaler, Sempra Energy, offered to buy Alaskan natural gas, and the North Slope oil producers said 'no.'
Hickel said that, under the state's Constitution, the people of Alaska own the North Slope natural gas, and if the producers think they can say 'no' to done deals, they are wrong.
"What should we do? The road map is clear," Hickel said. "We should demand that the producers sell, or we should take back the leases. Yes, in the name of the Alaskan people, we should take back that gas that belongs to all of us."
"Gov. Murkowski believes that the best way to get our gas to market is through a voluntary agreement and not through actions that could potentially lead us into litigation that could take years to resolve," said spokeswoman Becky Hultberg.
The governor's office says, in effect, that 'tough guy' talk makes for good television, but when you're dealing with complex negotiations, quiet diplomacy is best.
"That's why the state is actively working with the producers, with Trans-Canada, and will continue to work with the Gasline Port Authority, to ultimately get that gas to market," Hultberg said.
Now the governor is continuing his negotiations, and the North Slope producers continue to say they want a gas pipeline that extends almost 4,000 miles -- from the North Slope across Canada all the way to Chicago.
It's a $20 billion project which requires complex negotiations between the State of Alaska, the government of Canada, and the North Slope producers. In 25 years, efforts to build the line have consistently failed.
Of course, the proposed all-Alaska route presumably simplifies those negotiations by leaving the government of Canada out of the process.
The Sempra deal that Gov. Hickel spoke of would have created an 800-mile all-Alaska line from the North Slope to Valdez. The producers say they refused to sell the gas to Sempra because they just can't make money on the all-Alaska route. They say the cost of transporting the gas 800 miles, then having to super-cool it so it can be liquefied for transport on huge ships, just makes it uneconomical.
But backers of the all-Alaska line dispute that. They say that, that as a quasi-governmental agency, the pipeline Port Authority gets special tax breaks that do make an all-Alaska route economical. |
