A natural gas supply proposal from Siemens and Knikatnu Corporation is a safer, less expensive option for the Interior Gas Utility. That’s the message from officials with the partnered companies that want to supply the Fairbanks North Star Borough’s Interior Gas Utility with liquefied natural gas.
The IGU’s current plan is to expand its Titan LNG production plant on Cook Inlet to increase output of gas it trucks to Fairbanks.
Speaking in Fairbanks on Monday, Knikatnu Corporation President Tom Harris says buying gas from Knik area Native Corporation and Siemens would save the Interior Gas Utility the cost of expanding the Titan plant.
”I don’t look at Siemens as a competing interest. They’re a completing interest,” Harris said. “There is not the capacity at Titan to make the demand today.”
Harris says Knikatnu has a proven coal bed methane source of gas on corporation owned land where the companies plan to install LNG production facilities. He emphasizes that the property is along the Alaska Railroad tracks, providing a cheaper, safer transportation alternative to increasing daily LNG truck traffic out of Southcentral.
”The last thing we want to see is 50 trucks of LNG coming up Knik Goose Bay Road going north and 50 trucks coming back empty, on a road that’s already killing so many people because it’s so overcrowded,” Harris said.
Siemens’ proposes using scalable gas processing modules to begin supplying Fairbanks with LNG as early as 2019.
Dan Bross is a reporter at KUAC in Fairbanks.
