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An LNG tanker fills up at the ConocoPhillips liquid natural gas export facility in Nikiski, Alaska. When it opened in 1969, it was the only facility of its kind in the U.S. to get a license to export its gas to Japan. For more than forty years, the state has attempted to develop similar projects to bring natural gas from the North Slope to market, none of those projects have broken ground. (Photo courtesy of ConocoPhillips) - For more than forty years, the state has tried, and failed, to bring natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope to market.
In all, there have been at least ten different versions of the pipeline mega project. And not one has come close to breaking ground.
This week, Alaska’s Energy Desk is examining some of the reasons why the state has struck out in its efforts to bring it’s substantial natural gas reserves to market.
Story 1: On a tour of the state’s love affair with a gas line
The 1970s were a crazy time in Alaska. The state was young and along with that adolescence came its first infatuation, oil. Prudhoe Bay was discovered in 1968 and it changed everything. It was North America’s largest oil field.
But Alaska wanted more, and even as the behemoth Trans-Alaska Pipeline System was being built, several companies were pursuing natural gas pipeline projects to bring North Slope gas to market.
Bill White, a pipeline historian and former journalist, takes reporter Rashah McChesney on a tour of Anchorage that includes the important sites in the state’s long romance with a gas line.
Rashah McChesney is a photojournalist turned radio journalist who has been telling stories in Alaska since 2012. Before joining Alaska's Energy Desk, she worked at Kenai's Peninsula Clarion and the Juneau bureau of the Associated Press. She is a graduate of Iowa State University's Greenlee Journalism School and has worked in public television, newspapers and now radio, all in the quest to become the Swiss Army knife of storytellers.
