Latest Risk to Alaska Gas Pipeline: More Gas ( From the lower 48 states )

The discovery of huge new natural-gas fields across the contiguous U.S. is threatening Alaska's plans for a pipeline to export gas to the lower 48 states.

Two rival consortiums, each backed by major energy companies, are competing to build the pipeline, designed to carry gas from Alaska's North Slope to continental markets.

But even as the project is poised to get off the ground after decades of discussion, its viability is being called into question as energy companies have found huge new supplies of natural gas locked in dense rocks known as shale in places such as Texas, Louisiana and Pennsylvania.

Those supplies are glutting the market and driving down prices, leading many experts to question whether a pipeline from Alaska is needed or could turn a profit for its backers.

Still, on Friday, one of the two contenders, backed by energy giant Exxon Mobil Corp. and pipeline company TransCanada, formally asked federal regulators for permission to begin accepting bids from gas producers for space on the pipeline, which would carry as much as 4.5 billion cubic feet of gas a day.

"This filing is an important milestone for the project and Alaska," said Tony Palmer, TransCanada's vice president in charge of the project. Mr. Palmer said he believed there is "no lack of demand" for the gas in the contiguous U.S.

The rival project, a joint venture of oil and gas producers BP PLC and ConocoPhillips, plans this spring to announce details of its own plans and begin its own bidding process. The project would stretch as much as 2,000 miles from Alaska and would cost an estimated $30 billion.

“Personally, it’s best to build up as much infrastructure as possible for future demand.”

That would be a good national strategy. Smart countries have national strategies, like India and China.

But all we have are two purchased political parties and the useful idiot business cultists whose heads would explode if a strategy was suggested that did not maximize immediate profits now. They would call it “socialism” in their infantile way.

all-Alaska pipeline

That name is just a marketing scam. Unless it only serves markets within Alaska or on the border with Canada, it is not an All-Alaskan Pipeline.

What was proposed would lower the value Alaska receives for its gas as LNG is less cost-effective than pipelines for transporting Natural Gas.

Most likely the Pipeline-to-Valdez combined with LNG would serve the same lower 48 market, only via terminals and pipelines in Mexico, delivering the same gas to the same market. But the cost of transportation would be higher, the price paid in the US would be unchanged and Alaska would receive less dollar for less gas as the market would likely be less.

The Canadian route delivers Gas to an existing pipeline infrastructure that has a decline supply and surplus capacity.

Shipping longer distance to Asia and competing against Russia and Australia with lower transportation cost would result in even less return for their resouces.

But some people limit their thinking to catchy slogans.

“Personally, it’s best to build up as much infrastructure as possible for future demand.”

I agree with you 100%. Any money spent on developing domestic energy supplies is a good investment. The only exception are feel good “green energy” projects which can only make it with huge government subsidies. I speak of course of windmills, solar panel farms, and biofuels. Everyone of which is a huge waste of time and resources and each cost up to dozens of times more per kwh of energy than traditional sources such as oil, natural gas and coal.

The only good “green energy” is hydro power which the state I live in, Washington does not consider to be environmentally friendly. Even during the Enron scandle existing hydro-power facilities were being denied their operating permits and being shut down. I say build some good fish ladders and dam every stream. Then build more dams on the streams and rivers that already have dams. It is especially frustrating to me when we have a giant flood control dam on the Green River a few miles from where I live and they want to spend hundreds of millions of Federal dollars fixing it up, but don’t want to use it to generate any electricity. What a huge waste of a natural resource. It is maddening. I am certain that a utility would step forward and rebuild the dam for free if they got to sell the power.

If the rare fish that don’t make good eating can’t make it up the fish ladders, then stock the lakes with fish that grow bigger and taste better. Only this time around can we take a little extra time to cut the stumps off flush with the ground or use an appropriate amount of diesel and ammonium nitrate to blow them out of the ground? We don’t want to be tearing up expensive outboard motors when the water level goes down.

I forgot there are a few other worthwhile green energy sources such as geothermal in a smattering of spots around the country. But most of what you hear about clean; energy is a complete waste of time. And then there is always nuclear power, could sixty five million French people really be wrong? A few years ago they actually shut down a working nuclear plant a hundred miles from our home also. We lost a bunch of “green” energy jobs when that happened. And that is not to mention WHOOPS a scheme to build several nuclear plants in our area which went bankrupt mostly due to government red tape and environmental lawsuits.

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As the Long-Discussed Energy Project Finally Advances, Discoveries of Fields Outside the State Threaten Chances