Efforts to clear the way for a natural gas pipeline along the Alaska Highway to Alberta continue, though prospects for the line may have diminished.
Federal Coordinator for the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline Project Larry Persily was in Fairbanks last week giving updates on the project. He says TransCanada and Exxon are on track to meet the requirements of the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, or AGIA.
Persily says that will be followed in January with series of public scoping meetings on the E.I.S. process by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He says if the project stays on schedule, the companies will submit an application for a certificate to build and operate a pipeline by October 2012, and qualify for state subsidies amounting to five hundred million dollars for getting to that point. As to what then? Nobody knows. It’s still an investment with risk involved.
Coordinator Persily says market prospects for Alaska gas exports are bleak.
Persily says projects in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, and Yemen are all on track to feed the Asian market. He says China and India, the countries with much of the demand also have their own domestic gas resources.
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Dan Bross is a reporter at KUAC in Fairbanks.
