News-Miner Editorial
Patience, please
We all want a gas line, but let’s not make a mistake
Published Friday, March 28, 2008
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Stumble It!The seemingly age-old tug-of-war may be under way yet again in the effort to get the proposed North Slope natural gas pipeline moving forward. It’s the tug between the time needed to ensure the state’s leaders make a proper decision and pressure from others to abandon delay and get the construction going as soon as possible.
Alaskans, despite waiting over a generation for the gas line to come to reality, must be patient in the face of suggestions that not much more study needs to be done and that crews need to get out into the field soon.
The latest, albeit small, installment in this periodic tussle between prudence and impatience came this week when an executive from pipeline applicant TransCanada warned that his company’s proposal to the state depended on a timely issuance of a state license to proceed. TransCanada, the only applicant whose proposal met the terms of the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, according to Gov. Sarah Palin’s gas line team, had expected a license to be issued in April.
The TransCanada executive said it now appears that a license will not be issued in April. With the Palin administration yet to recommend issuing a license, and with the Legislature yet to ratify it, summer seems more likely — again, assuming the governor recommends issuing the license. The Legislature would have 60 days to vote on the license.
The governor shouldn’t feel rushed.
The Legislature should feel free to use all of its 60 days to study the merits of the TransCanada proposal. It should feel free, too, to complain that 60 days might not be enough, even though that’s what the law allows.
Pressure will grow as the Legislature moves to the mid-April end of its regular session.
Alaskans and their leaders need to resist it. They need to insist the TransCanada proposal be stripped bare and analyzed as nothing before.
Community Discussion
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Here is what Governor Palin said when she signed AGIA in Fairbanks:
"It lets us consider doing it ourselves," Palin said when discussing a possible outcome.
Certainly, that is the preferred option for Alaska at this point. What we know- without any doubt- is that the TransCanada proposal would be a disaster for Alaska, and our borough.
TransCanada would not get gas flowing for at least ten years, costing Fairbanks North Star Borough residents over one billion dollars in excess energy costs due to that delay.
TransCanada has not settled aboriginal land claims in Canada. Should Alaska's economic future be held hostage to those land claims?
TransCanada has not provided nearly enough gas delivery points for Alaska. Should our borough be satisfied with only one delivery point, when we need five? How about the rest of rural Alaska that needs low cost natural gas? Should these small communities be abandoned?
Voters in Alaska have made very clear that we want an All Alaska Gasline- from the North Slope to Valdez. How could we advance an inferior proposal that is not consistent with a voter mandate?
We have record, windfall, oil revenues to pay for a state gasline. This critical piece of infrastructure is no different than our airports, our roads, or even the state owned Bradley Lake hydroelectric project that provides inexpensive electricity- 4 cents per KWH.
We finally have a smart, honest, governor who has the vision to move this project forward.
With a bit of luck and assuming the State moves in it's typically timely manner my great great grandchildren just might be able to get jobs as construction of the new gas pipeline begins - assuming they aren't retired by then.
You will be lucky if your great grandchildren even have a job, yet alone a healthy planet to live on!
A big-steal pipeline from Alaska to Texas via Alberta is an outdated and obsolete battleship design that was first dreamed up by speculators in the 1920's.
very bad feng-shui
very bad feng-shui
TAPS today is a leaky-creaky oversized piece of junk operating at 45% capacity while waiting for World War 4 to begin it's last orgasmic splurge of Navy-Pet4 toward the sea.
$100trillion of debt derivatives...
The hydrocarbons in Alaska are claimed by non-Alaskan speculators and have already been mortgaged and spent even before they have been pumped from the ground...
...these "economic powerhouses" are psychotic and should be committed to the asylum.
The construction of this big-steal-pipeline will serve to consolidate the proposed "North American Union" as proposed and planned by the same group of wackanoodles who brought you the political landscape and economic outlook of the past 20years.
Now don't get me wrong here, I really really like authentic Canadians, and I would share my last gallon of oil with them if we were freezing to death together. But this big-steal-pipeline is being sponsored and encouraged and steamrolled by international corporations that are in the same league as ENRON.... generating wealth through monopoly, and inefficiency be damned. It's this inefficiency that's causing problems like Global Warming.
Canada doesn't need to borrow the gas to float the tar-sands..
in the past 6 months there's been new technologies that have been already sold for millions of dollars to do the tar-sands much more efficiently.
Don't confuse the economic crisis with the energy crisis.
Solving one won't solve the other, because both are just symptoms of a much deeper mental health crisis.
...flash/rumble
SORRY, News Miner Staff, but "patience" has past the point of intolerable. Delay, delay, delay and study, study, study has been the the only results that have materialized with North Slope gas production since 1969. Bureaucratic bumbling and multi-national corporate greed just don't cut it any more.
If we have got politicians that want to "set on it" for a little longer; where is that recall petition? And if BIG OIL wants to protect their investments in Qatar and SE Asia LNG projects, so be it. "Corporate-non-grata" and get out of the way of Alaska meeting the needs of Alaskans. Breech of contracts and terms of lease of the North Slope gas field have gone on and on. It is past time to get moving.
The legislature could alleviate a crisis situation by temporartily forgiving consumer fuel taxes. Wouldn't solve the problem, but it would buy us time. And at the pace that the governmnent is moving, buying time would be a sweet option.
I think Sarah Palin is the Governor to get this project moving. I still have doubts about Trans-Canada, but we need to move on something, and if it is not an All Alaskan pipeling (my preference) then lets get moving with Trans-Canada!! I think we should have already foreclosed on Point Thompson fields. The days of big oil running Alaska is quickly coming to an end!! Go Gov. Palin!!!
Somehow the pipeline project seems be slipping completely out of control.
The AGIA was intended to open and transparent. The transparency and openness don’t seem to apply to discussions of future gas taxes.
The All Alaska LNG option got the squashed like a bug. I’m still not clear on why a short gas line to an Alaska LNG port is more expensive than a long gas line to the Alberta Tar Sand field.
The Canadians want up to 25% rate of return. Fairbanks is getting desperate for energy.
Lots of folks feeling aliened and shortchanged by the whole process. With the North Slope producers sidelined – who gets the credit for all this?
I’m taking a poll, check it out:
http://alaska-gas-pipeline.blogspot.com/...
The AGL is already heading into past technology. How much is it going to cost - in fuel alone - to build an AGL? Alska should follow Sarah Palin in her quest to tap our geothernal energy and be a leader in clean energy.
Move forward!!!
MamaSan
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