Either Dunleavy or AGDC is lying about the gas pipeline schedule
Gov. Mike Dunleavy went on Fox Business last week and said the master plan is to have the 42-inch gas pipeline in place and operating in two-and-a-half years, which would be October 2027.
The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation is making a presentation to the Legislative Budget & Audit Committee today at 5:30 p.m. that says the first gas would be flowing to Southcentral in 2031.
Either Dunleavy or AGDC is lying. The claim will be made that no one is lying, just dreaming.
But the inability of the Dunleavy administration to tell a straight story about something this basic is alarming.
The so-called “first phase” of the project is to build an $11-billion-plus pipeline to Southcentral, which will exclude the $33-billion-plus of gas treatment and export facilities needed for the full project.
We don’t know the real cost of the first phase. The Glenfarne gas pipeline study of up to $50 million, which comes with a money-back state guarantee from AIDEA, is to update the number, which is likely to be a few billion dollars higher.
The first phase would be able to carry up to 500 million cubic feet of gas a day, while the full pipeline, with those costly processing plants added, would transport 3.3 billion cubic feet a day. The first phase gas, from an undeveloped field, would not need processing. That is the operating theory.
Below is a slide AGDC prepared for the 5:30 p.m. committee meeting today, saying gas would flow in 2031 from the first phase.
The two sentences at the bottom of the slide may be a clue that the Dunleavy master plan is to have the state finance a major portion late this year. This suggests there will be a special session with the Legislature asked to accelerate the process with a multi-billion-dollar investment.
Even then, Dunleavy’s 2027 dream is not realistic. Maybe construction could start in 2027.
All of this needs to be out in the open. Alaskans should be told of the “options to accelerate this timeline” that “are being pursued.”
AGDC prepared this slide for the Legislative Budget & Audit Committee for a meeting Wednesday. The first gas to Southcentral Alaska would be flowing by 2031, four years after Dunleavy claimed in an interview on Fox Business last week.
Here is what Dunleavy told Stuart Varney of Fox Business last Thursday, while the market crashed from the Trump Liberation Day trade war, about the first gas flowing in 2027.
“We’re looking at actually putting the pipeline itself in place, the liquefaction plant later, that would actually send the gas to Asia. But putting that pipeline in place so that Alaska itself can get gas. Our goal is two-and-a-half years for this 42-inch pipe to be put in place, since we’ve got all the permits. And we, we’ll be making some final decision investments, at least Glenfarne will, which is the outfit that is the private investor and lead in the project. Probably by August, September at the very latest, but it’s looking really good,” Dunleavy said.
Legislators need to pin down the Dunleavy administration on this four-year gap and the other conflicting claims.
Dunleavy told Varney that the letter of intent signed with Taiwan is for “six billion tons” of LNG. I think he meant six million tons, the figure he used in other statements.
When he said the Taiwan letter “will lead to a permanent contract,” he was not telling the truth. The non-binding letter of intent may or may not lead to something permanent.
“In Taiwan, for example, they signed an LOI, a letter of intent, which will lead to a permanent contract of six billion tons of gas. This would be the largest off-take of any one off-taker, I think, in the history of LNG. They also talked about actually investment in the pipeline itself,” Dunleavy said.
As to what this would mean for Alaska, Dunleavy said: “Everything. It would be 60 years, I think, of prosperity. Very importantly it would provide fuel for our bases. Alaska has a number of military bases. We are on the frontier with some pretty dangerous neighbors. Our gas fields in Cook Inlet have been depleting for years. And so this would mean that our bases would definitely have fuel, our utilities would have fuel. And you could be looking at things such as manufacturing and data farms well into the future, so 50-60 years of prosperity,” he said.
Before we get to 50-60 years of prosperity, tell the truth about whether the so-called first phase of the pipeline will be in operation by October 2027.
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