Rep. Mike Chenault has been pushing an LNG gasline from the North Slope to Nikiski, but this would threaten existing gas fields in Cook Inlet.
Smaller gas/oil developers have been revitalizing the Cook inlet fields since 2009, and it's unwise to jeopardize this. A North Slope gas line terminating in Nikiski provides direct competition with the smaller oil/gas developers.
At the same time, a gas pipeline LNG project is advantageous to Nikiski as long as it does not terminate on the Kenai Peninsula. Kenai based companies such as GLM, Team, Iisco, AES and others stand to benefit directly from the gas pipeline.
Kenai Peninsula residents are encouraged to support an in-state gas pipeline that terminates at tidewater in Southcentral Alaska, but should protest any routes that terminate in the Cook Inlet or Kenai vicinity.
Comments (4)
Add commentFree Market / Competition
Rep. Chenault is doing what he feels is best for the constituants he represents. The existing companies in Cook Inlet should always be prepared to face stiff competition from other larger or more efficient companies. Competition is what keeps companies in the running and what drives technology and other advances in industry.
Alaskans are being
Alaskans are being economically raped by having the benefits of even OUR OWN royalty share of natural gas and gas liquids (propane etc) withheld from the larger world "anchor" market, which would support the natural gas product industry here in Alaska once again like it used to be in Nikiski. Withholding natural gas product "availability" from Alaskans, drives the market for oil higher in Alaska, as that`s all that`s left to use to refine those vital products because there is no competition. Two small oil-fired refineries don`t create competition. There is no argument having gas and gas liquids available would drive competition. A gasline to Valdez would change the paradigm. The view from 30,000 feet demands we build that gasline to a deep, ice-free tidewater port, and soon. More so while interest rates, steel costs, and labor costs are all at rock bottom. This wide open economic window for LNG exports to an anchor customer won`t always be there. We need to push the slope producers to the wall to get our royalty gas to ourselves at least. A GTL plant would compete with the normal refinery process as it would produce low-sulfur fuels far more efficiently than oil, an added bonus. A GTL plant is being built in Ohio for 300 million that will produce 200,000 barrels of liquid fuels per day. It would be the cleanest and best jet-A and diesel/gasoline one could buy. And far less polluting across the process by almost half when compared to oil.
Is competetition a bad thing now?
I don't get your point Tim. Yes, a gas terminus in Nikiski would provide competition for local producers. That is a good thing for consumers. Cook Inlet producers should not be protected from competition at the expense of consumers.
There will be no instate gas line.
Neither the economics nor politics favor an instate gas line to either city. This project is dead and remains only as a political talking point for certain regional politicians eager to please. Absent billions of state dollars, who would pay for such a project? Big oil, who owns the current governor, does not want it, so it seems unlikely there is any chance of state financing. Valdez needs to let go of this fantasy, and the Central Kenai needs to be thankful that the independents have entered the area and brought some life back to what has been for the last 20 years an industrial graveyard.