Alaska State Government Perennially Confused About Pipeline Options

The Alaska state government for several decades has vacillated in pursuit of various options to bring in oil or gas revenue to pay for the government operations as the North Slope oil fields are depleted. Even during the 1980s research and development studies for state or corporate financed construction of pipelines to bring more oil or natural gas to tidewater in south central Alaska or Chicago through Canada were main political interests. Nothing ever was constructed from those studies.

Former Governors from Wally Hickel to Tony Knowles and Sarah Palin along with countless candidates have made the construction of a natural gas pipeline a political plank. The simplest thing to build would be an LNG plant at Valdez or Anchorage and a pipeline to it, yet the practical is always set aside for the pursuit of ecological boondoogles.

Former Governor Sarah Palin ram-rodded through a half billion dollar state subsidy to a Canadian Corporation-Trans-Canada in an effort to get an oil corporation to build a pipeline and jobs for Canadians. With the discovery of new methods of fracturing natural gas from formations in the 48 states, the price of natural gas has decreased the interest in building a pipeline from the North Slope through Canadian pipeline infrastructure by special corporate interests. Environmentally that may be a collateral improvement.

The city of Anchorage also has a former state Governor-Bill Sheffield, in a powerful job as a Port Director implementing a construction project over cost, over time and budget. A Port of Anchorage expansion that is sputtering on with building errors reportedly could cost hundreds of millions of dollars too much for completion. The City must close libraries and forgo building warm pedestrian and bike transit malls for winter to finance construction errors.

The global price of gas and oil fluctuates as a regular instability adversely affecting U.S. economics. Building a pipeline and/or gas liquefaction plant at Valdez or Anchorage from the North Slope via Fairbanks flowing through the existing trans-Alaska pipeline corridor might at any given time bring in low or high revenues and royalties as empirical reciprocal values vary. The state and corporations wish to build when the price of natural is high or when supply is diminshed, yet of course the market is partly manipulated and supplies and applications are distorted to maximize corporate profit. The state might find an unreliable market price a reciprocol of political as well as geophysical supply factors. Yet as the state can afford to build the line itself and auction liquefied natural gas to world buyers generally at low or high prevailing market prices it has little reason to produce more rhetoric than gas.

Environmental effects for fracturing basement rock formations in the 48 states have already generated new pollution, toxic water reserves and flaming faucets. War in the Middle East can cut off oil supply and quickly drive up fossil fuel prices. A state government should build a pipeline infrastructure for gas carefully and in compliance with advanced ecological synergy concepts ahead of price fluctuations on the global market. A retarded construction rice changes in a volatile market has a good chance of being out of step at any rate. In a national emergency the pre-existence of a local gas pipeline and LNG plant would mitigate the supply issues. Needless to mention it is important to expect federal investment in lightweight car batteries without rare earth metals and a policy of electric cars without use of fossil fuels.

If Alaska has extra liquefied natural gas it can sell to China on the spot market perhaps a number of Chinese global warming gases producing coal fired power plants could be replaced with some burning cleaner natural gas. Natural gas spent in power plants instead of developing fuel cell generators, superconductors, wind and solar energy input) too quickly reduces national natural gas reserves.