newsminer.com

The port authority’s project manager, Bill Walker, just spent the morning in Fairbanks talking up the “all-Alaska” project before state lawmakers. It wasn’t clear if he was protesting the administration’s analysis of LNG, trying to pull down TransCanada’s application, or something else.

So this afternoon, Rep. Anna Fairclough ask him.

“I’m not sure exactly from your presentation what you want us to do,” she said.

Walker’s answer spread out over the next 15 minutes and a number of questions and came with so much emotion that Walker cried as he gave it.

“We’re not asking you to choose us over anything else,” he said. “I guess what we’re saying is we’re concerned about having to wait for any other project to go before the all-Alaska line. . . . We think getting gas to Alaskans now is critical.”

Walker came to another slide on his PowerPoint presentation and noted how a lot of the talk about various pipeline projects has to do with risks -- risks to pipeline builders, dealing with things like cost overruns and market prices. But there’s also a huge risk to Alaskans if nothing happens, he said.

He pulled out a compilation of 162 announcements, articles, and other documents over nearly two decades about pipeline projects just around the corner.

“It’s troubling,” he said. “I see myself in a number of these.”

“That’s why we’re here," he went on. "We don’t want this process to become number 163. We want to make sure this process is successful.”

Walker choked up, paused, and added, “This has been a tough time.”

“We think we have a solution -- an idea of a way forward within AGIA.”

Walker’s idea is basically that the state should grant TransCanada a license, but figure out some way to ensure that if there’s enough gas committed to the project to build an LNG line, and if that LNG line is ready to go, then it should be allowed to go first -- with TransCanada building the “all-Alaska” line.

“I think we have a great application,” he said, referring to TransCanada’s. “All we’re saying is don’t let the process prevent a project from going forward.”