Ben Stanton, KDLL – Kenai
The Federal Coordinator for Alaska Natural Gas Transportation Projects Larry Persily also reacted to the LNG closure. He says he thinks that this announcement helps make the case for the project he is overseeing that aims to get a gas pipeline from the North Slope to the Lower 48.
He says that the Nikiski plant helped supply the Japanese gas market, which is much smaller than North American markets.
Persily says because so many gas producers are in the global market, it makes export of LNG too costly compared with supplying North America, which burns three times as much gas as China, India, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan combined.
Persily says that the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation’s plan for a gas line from the North Slope to South Central needs facilities like the Nikiski LNG plant to be viable.
A recent report to the Alaska Legislature shows that large subsidies would be needed for an in-state-only gas line to work. Persily says if the Nikiski plant is unavailable, then those subsidies would be, in his words, “astronomical.”
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