Congressional delegation lies about Biden administration blocking gas pipeline
Alaska’s senators know better, but they have attached their names to a letter to the Trump administration that claims “four years of inaction and squandered time” by the Biden administration prevented construction of an Alaska natural gas pipeline.
I don’t know if Rep. Nick Begich the Third, who also signed the letter, understands that the claim is a lie.
The thrust of the argument from Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan and Nick the Third is that by failing to set up federal regulations to qualify for a federal loan guarantee the Biden administration stopped the project.
Sullivan has lied on a separate document that it is a priority to “reverse the Biden administration blackballing” of the federal loan guarantee program.
There was no blackballing of the federal loan guarantee by Biden for what Sullivan now claims is “America’s Gasline.”
I guarantee you that we would have heard about this before had it really happened.
As Sullivan said in 2023, “because of the roughly $30 billion in loan guarantees that the Alaska congressional delegation was able to secure in the infrastructure bill, we can tout the Alaska LNG project as the only LNG project backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.”
What has really stopped America’s Gasline, which Sullivan says is a “cornerstone of the America First energy agenda,” is that companies in foreign countries have refused to sign binding contracts needed to finance the megaproject. It would be more honest to blame private industry for blackballing America’s Gasline.
Think of the letter as a Musk/Trump con game in which the best way to get anything from the co-presidents or their underlings is to claim that whatever you want was blocked by Biden, the worst president in history.
That will allow the Musk/Trump regime to take credit for an alleged accomplishment—in this case the simple creation of “guidance or regulations to accept applications” for a federal loan guarantee on the Alaska gas pipeline.
The lie here is the notion that a pipeline is not under construction simply because there are no regulations about how a loan guarantee application would be processed by the federal government.
“This foot-dragging created market confusion regarding Alaska LNG. Urgent action under your leadership to develop the necessary guidance or regulations will accelerate progress on this vital project,” Murkowski, Sullivan and Nick the Third wrote to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
I understand that trying to con Trump is standard practice.
But we shouldn’t be kidding ourselves into thinking that giant companies with the ability to sign LNG purchase contracts to underwrite the financing of the project for decades—probably at a cost in excess of $50 billion—are too dumb to understand that the federal loan subsidy is established in federal law. There is no market confusion.
The loan guarantee, now to cover about $30 billion, would lower the cost of borrowing for the project because the federal government would promise to pay back that $30 billion to those making the loans if the project falls apart. This would lower the risk of the loans.
The wishful thinking now among Alaska’s elected leaders is that the Trump blackmail campaign, using tariffs and tariff threats as a weapon, will force private companies and governments in Asia to sign long-term LNG purchase contracts.
As I have written here, I doubt that Trump’s blackmail will succeed. But there will be no end of talk about how great Trump’s idea is to build a gas pipeline, how great Trump is and how Japan, Korea and Taiwan will study this for years.
Here is the full letter sent March 4 to Wright from the congressional delegation.
Here is a background report prepared in 2011 about the federal loan guarantee and how it would work.
In 2021, an amendment by Murkowski and Sullivan made the Alaska LNG export project eligible for the federal loan guarantee, now estimated at more than $30 billion. Before that change, the federal backstop was available only for a domestic project that sent Alaska gas to the Lower 48.
The guidelines and regulations can be developed quickly if and when a group of companies is ready to sign binding contracts for tens of billions.
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This is from a 2011 presentation by the federal coordinator of the proposed gas pipeline about the mechanics of the federal loan guarantee.