Letter to the Editor
Alaska’s gas
Published Tuesday, May 6, 2008
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To the editor:
Fast-tracking the construction of an in-state natural gas “Bullet Line” makes more sense than anything else in the paper lately.
Wake up people. It’s the 21st century. In the Lower 48, natural gas lines run everywhere. What’s it gonna take, $5 per gallon at the pumps?
Imagine Fairbanks on natural gas. Existing heating systems, electrical generation, even most of the internal combustion engines could be converted to run cleaner, cheaper and longer on natural gas. Say farewell to ice fog and hello to more small industries that rely on cheap power or petrochemicals.
How do we get the gas flowing without 10 years of studies?
Have an essay contest. Invite Alaskans to submit “overviews” or “guidelines” to get ready for this enormous transformation. $5,000 to the winner. Or free natural gas for life. It would be worth it.
We need to be educating our young people in all gas-related industries even as the line is being built. We are going to need a fleet of furnace installers, technicians and internal combustion engine engineers. It will take years to change over, retrofitting the whole area to cleaner, cheaper fuel. Alaskans with these new careers would be just one segment of society to benefit. Foresight would be needed in other areas, also. That’s why we gather the best ideas. Quickly.
Recently, Russia has chosen to go offshore with their new gas pipelines to Europe rather than incur “transit charges” and the political risks of passing through foreign countries.
Alaskans can not afford to wait until the battle for exporting our gas is over. Besides, it looks like most of those benefits will have to “trickle down” via Juneau.
The corporation of the state of Alaska is getting rich off of the high energy costs. We the people are paying for it. It don’t make sense!
Let’s get some ideas floating around on this. I’ll put a couple hundred dollars toward a “reward” for the best idea to get that gas moving.
Better yet, let’s buy some pipe and start welding it together.
Community Discussion
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Distant Thunder has an even better idea.
Construct our "bullet line" using the ethane from the NGL's and take advantage of the savings in time and expenses much less than steel by using HDPE.
The other side of this notion is we have to satisfy some stuffy banking principle in order to justify giving ourselves our own cheap gas.
What kind of crap have we been sold and bought into by presuming to have to show "x" amount of profit in order to justify keeping our homes and families warm?
It's our gas, our government and our hurting towns and economy.
It does not belong to our government!!!
They are only agents of our will as voters.
Ask yourselves that one again and again and wonder why it is the powers that be are so constipated when it comes to watching out for the well being of Alaska's people they purport to represent as opposed to the diarrhea they lavishly dispense from with their legislative alter egos.
The people of Alaska need COLA's like nobody ever has.
We can afford to piss away some money on ourselves in the form of a gasline.
I say so after nearly 60 years in Alaska!
The purpose of the Permanent Fund I recall voting for in 1978 or so was for rainy days.
They are sitting in and on piles of money that belong to us, not the sports complexes that give them re-election time after time when they're not taking vacations behind bars.
Yep, it's raining hard and the rivers are rising.
Why should we wait for the Big Oil companies to build a gas pipeline when we have the money to do it ourselves?
Just wait till the oil line gets built, then we will have "CHEAP" fuel. Golden Valley will build "CHEAP" power plants, we will be able to heat our homes, run our trucks and cars, CHEAP. Fast foward, natural gas is CHEAP, lets build a pipeline. Wake up Alaska you are giving away the most valueable asset you have, natural resorses. It wont take long for them to be gone and then what? Who will pay the bills for all the overhead we are now putting into place?
I can't wait to convert my truck to run on CNG! By putting a couple of compressed natural gas cylinders in the bed of the truck I can get a range of 800 miles between fill-ups and the cost will be less than $1 a gallon if we get the same deal that Anchorage now has.
My thought are to allow the people of Alaska to opt for letting their share of the dividend go to building the bullet line in Alaska. Then they would own a share in the line feeding Alaska fuel. If someone would rather have the money then let them have it. But for us who would like to own a part of our future, let us by shares in this pipeline. It would be worth so much more for each of us in the future. Then we would not have to hear that the state is taking the money but we are choosing to work and live here and want to make the state survive in the long run. Sent this idea with a little more info to the governor's office but have not heard if anyone read it yet. Sure there is a lot of paper work to make it even happen and to do it right, but I am just sharing an idea.
WHO IS WATCHING THE WATCH DOG? The Regulatory Commission of Alaska, RCA, motto is "Protecting consumer interest. Promoting economic development." http://rea.alaska.gov/RCAWeb/home.aspx
Most Interior and Rural Alaskan residents might find some interesting reading, with what has been going on with this watch dog.
I agree that we need to do something, but as for Natural Gas being "cheap" I'm not so sure.
By the time the politicians finally agree with us "normal" people Gas is going to be incredibly higher priced. I watch the price on a regular basis - on channel 65. Right now it is at 11.22 - which is up 5.00 from where it was earlier on in winter.
I also access my Grandmother's gas account in Rockford, IL. Last month she paid $172.00 to heat her house (that she is not living in) at 50 degrees. She is not heating her water currently and the temperature has been in the 50's a lot. So, I am not sure how much more her bill would've been had she been living there in a comfortable temperature & heating her water.
http://rca.alaska.gov/RCAWeb/home.aspx
Copper - We are the government and the government is us. Simply because all the elected officials are not doing what you want them to, does not mean they're not doing what they're supposed to. What you suggest is that we're an "anarcho-capitalist" regime rather than a democratic republic.
Conspiracy, paranoia, and a mob mentality seem to permeate these posts. There's a reason that Alaska and other companies (including TransCanada previously) have not been able to move forward. . .because it is EXTREMELY difficult.
Let's not forget that TransCanada and other joint venture partners tried to advance the project in the 1980s, but couldn't leaving a total debt obligation that is estimated at $9 billion. Furthermore, Wall Street would look at Alaska's financials and even with the Permanment Fund in the mix, would be very unlikely to approve financing for an Alaska owner/operator project. Besides which, forget about garnering all the reward, I don't want OUR state to assume all the risk.
HeathEdward: The Trans-Alaska-Oil-Pipeline that was constructed in the 1970's should never have been allowed without also making provisions for an instate gas line built along side of it. The major oil companies pulled off a good one, "for them", with that project...with consequences that ALASKA has been suffering from since.
The is no justifiable reason that Alaska has been paying the highest prices in the United States for gasoline and heating oil, while we have been providing the rest of the Nation cheap energy.
The quickest way to become a member of the "Sourdough Gas Passers Club" is to buy yourself a LPG-bobtail truck like this--->
http://www.truckpaper.com/listings/detai...
I found some "legal boilerplate" on the net you can use to write yourself a contract-pass to get some R-gas.. if you carefully word your request to AOGCC they cannot legally refuse a legal request to purchase any kind of hydrocarbon you want, if you have the proper training and DOT-certifications to drive a loaded LPG-bobtail on the road.. the actual availability at the supply source is the next question... you can make raw-field-gas work in a LPG-bobtail to fuel the truck-engine as well. Getting a mixed load of gas can be managed if you make repetitive partial refills by burning off the methane first by driving to Coldfoot and back to Prudhoe.. each time you'll get more NGL's in the bottom of the tank.
The next easiest way to get gas to Fairbanks ASAP is form a big quietly organized group and demand to make public to the citizens of Fairbanks the daily hydrocarbon composition of the "crude oil" passing through TAPS before it gets to NorthPole....
...the big-reason the Exxon Valdez did so much damage to Prince William Sound isn't because Exxon let a drunk captain command the ship from his bunk, the BIG-reason is Alyeska has been allowing highly "enriched" crude to be shipped all-along.. highly-enriched with NGL's, our Royalty NGL's... we designed TAPS to be run 150F hot to move thick-crude, and if Exxon had been using "coiled-tankers" properly, the crude-oil in the supertankers would be too solidified to run out of the ship at 40F water temps... instead it was a gassy-runny-soup full of our smuggled NGL's....
....So, you can be fairly certain after seeing that big puddle of runny liquid left from the bullethole from the "heroic pipeline shooter" that there's a big percentage of usable NGL's [propane,butane,ethane] that's always been available for local Alaskans to use in TAPS.
.....interesting to note that this link left by out___cold is now a "dead link". --> rea.alaska.gov
The 3rd easiest way to pass-gas around the rest of Alaska is to load containerized LPG-ISO-Tanks onto big landing-craft, or LPG-tankers then drive them around the coast and up the Yukon & Kusk.
A close tie to 3rd place is to get some plastic-pipe extrusion machines imported here and we can make our own two-thousand foot long 3-to-8"" LPG-gasline extrusions out of the back of a big truck-train.
The HDPE poly-bead costs 98cents a pound when shipped big-bulk from asia, but we can make it much cheaper here if we build our own small ethylene-plant. Small propane line pumps aren't too expensive either.
how long would it take a 3" 200psi LPG-gasline to fill a railcar?
...flash/rumble
DistantThunder: my second post of the Regulatory Commission of Alaska web site is the correct web address. http://rca.alaska.gov/RCAWeb/home.aspx
Sorry for the typo on the first post. This watch dog group is responsible for the tariff rates for gas, electricity and phone service in Alaska.
When Americans build pipelines it's EXTREMELY DIFFICULT...
...therefore EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE.. HA HA HA HA HA!!!
When many other countries build pipelines it's not a heck of a lot more difficult than building a road.
Sometimes I sat at the purchasing desk of a couple major contractors offices during TAPS construction...
...the game was to see if you could get a shipload of poorly organized supplies here yesterday no matter what the cost was.
All the costs were passed on down the food chain.
This business philosophy is endemic throughout the industry.
"Just in time shipping" logistics will be ignored if the boondoggle gets rolling.
There's many hopeful boomers hoping to cash in on a feeding frenzy of "pipeline panic"...
...something similar to what happened in Baghdad in 2003 when billions of dollars was literally handed out to whoever was standing next to Bremers offices that month.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020707...
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&...
An all Alaskan plastic-gasline network could be a group pastime..
..if all the small gold miners would donate just one of their half-pint-sized mason-jars full of dirty-placer they have stashed under the doghouse to this project we could totally transform the the viability of the Late Great Territory of Beringia into The New Big Dipper.
....splash/bumble
The only problem with building the gas line was who would supply it if no one else is involved the Private Fund can't be touched. It's like the Gov. Private Checking account. The line will got threw so many other Corp. lands that well also be entitled to a cut by the time it's built the price will be about the same. But less use of diesel fuel for the barges well be the only benefit.
Some seem a little confused also gas, oil, and natural gas. Gasoline is a by product from oil. Natural gas is usually found in area oil is found. Gasoline is measured by gallons. Natural by cubic feet. But I agree oil companies have be trying to make them on in the same. There is also more natural gases where oil is found.
Assembly Members,
I've received many questions asking why the State does not consider selling royalty oil for less than market value. I've brought this to the interior representatives and they told me that the current legal definition of maximum benefit of the resources is maximum dollars into the State treasury. As heating oil passes the $4 a gallon mark there are more and more people questioning the logic of this.
Do you think that there would be any legal grounds for a lawsuit against the State to redefine the maximum benefit to include in-state use of the resources by the citizens? While the borough considers declaring a state of emergency they might also consider filing a lawsuit against the State of Alaska royalty oil policy on behalf of the borough residents. The current “Maximum use of the resources” has resulted in out of control State spending and left half of Alaska’s population struggling to heat their homes. At the very least this kind of measure would bring statewide attention to the issue and get people talking about changing the way the State distributes oil wealth. Please consider bringing this item up for discussion at Thursdays assembly meeting.
Alaska Constitution Article 8 - Natural Resources
§ 1. Statement of Policy
It is the policy of the State to encourage the settlement of its land and the development of its resources by making them available for maximum use consistent with the public interest.
§ 2. General Authority
The legislature shall provide for the utilization, development, and conservation of all natural resources belonging to the State, including land and waters, for the maximum benefit of its people.
Letter to the editor about this:
http://newsminer.com/news/2008/apr/12/su...
Justin Powell
powell@fairbanksgas.com
907-460-7888
If you agree with this in any way send an email to assembly@co.fairbanks.ak.us today.
Butane,propane. Both are very combustable gases butane has a melting point 0 degress farienheit. Or lower these gases have to stay in a cold gas line that is very cold year around Alaska thru Canada would be a great place for the gases to travel thru winter months but spring, summer and fall. Might have a different view or a steaming pipeline that has ice packes that melt on it during the summer. Water might be scare in places that time and a moose was found dead near the pipeline during a summer dry period. Lack of oxygen. Or tounge was stuck to the pipe like children told not to like steel pipes? Not against the pipeline but not only steel would have to be used it'll have to be covered so this wouldn't happen. And a 24-7-365 watch if it might did they add that in cost?
HeathEdward,I don't believe I'm advocating for what you state.
I am unable to devote time to rebut right now but do look forward to further engagement.
I spent a lot of years on your side of things and have since seen a very different light than that which I feel I was lulled into by dogmatists who appealed to my sense of independence.
Further observation shows I was lacking in needed perspective.
To be continued, sir.
Everything revolves around oil? No there's not only the oil there's the gases that are given out as you've may or not read not just oil and oil prices are at stake there's something else the air of gases that's given out. Yes oil was a part but it's our lands everything that can or can't be seen must hold value the butane a propane gases are both invisible and lack smell. But saying where only want oil profits would leave us in the dark and cold. Gases are 100 times more plentiful then the amount of oil you'll find. Because like gasoline oils is even more plentiful. Is a has not odor just a obsortion of oxygen in the area. The heating oil debate well pass it's going to be old soon. The boilers well still be there but the environmentalist will love to make them all natural gas because there's less pollution buy their estiments. Which might be wrong any way.
Everything revolves around oil? No there's not only the oil there's the gases that are given out as you've may or not read not just oil and oil prices are at stake there's something else the air of gases that's given out. Yes oil was a part but it's our lands everything that can or can't be seen must hold value the butane a propane gases are both invisible and lack smell. But saying where only want oil profits would leave us in the dark and cold. Gases are 100 times more plentiful then the amount of oil you'll find. Because like gasoline oils is even more plentiful. Is a has not odor just a obsortion of oxygen in the area. The heating oil debate well pass it's going to be old soon. The boilers well still be there but the environmentalist will love to make them all natural gas because there's less pollution buy their estiments. Which might be wrong any way. Id hate to say it but we might have to say not only surface sub-surface but above surface needs to revise all holdings. Gases that might be sent in to the atmusforer was ours also. Which I don't think was ever taken into consideration lighters where fluid back then mostly.....It's a amount that might be more then most imagined 10 billion oil might have 100 ctf trillion in gases at $1.5 per cpf might be $150,000,000,000.00 Humm might be worth it? Don't let then lock what's our's!!!!
Everything revolves around oil? No there's not only the oil there's the gases that are given out as you've may or not read not just oil and oil prices are at stake there's something else the air of gases that's given out. Yes oil was a part but it's our lands everything that can or can't be seen must hold value the butane a propane gases are both invisible and lack smell. But saying where only want oil profits would leave us in the dark and cold. Gases are 100 times more plentiful then the amount of oil you'll find. Because like gasoline oils is even more plentiful. Is a has not odor just a obsortion of oxygen in the area. The heating oil debate well pass it's going to be old soon. The boilers well still be there but the environmentalist will love to make them all natural gas because there's less pollution buy their estiments. Which might be wrong any way. Id hate to say it but we might have to say not only surface sub-surface but above surface needs to revise all holdings. Gases that might be sent in to the atmusforer was ours also. Which I don't think was ever taken into consideration lighters where fluid back then mostly.....It's a amount that might be more then most imagined 10 billion oil might have 100 ctf trillion in gases at $1.5 per cpf might be $150,000,000,000.00 Humm might be worth it? Don't let them take freely lock what's our's!!!! Subfurce was for what below surface it was you see things like gases can be taking because it was never in the dymanics.