AK LNG

The public comment period for a draft environmental impact statement on the AK LNG project closed this week, but not before the Mat-Su borough filed yet another motion asking federal regulators to again review the possibility of locating the terminus of the cross-state natural gas line at Port MacKenzie.

By this time next year, the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation may itself have run out of gas. With no additional funding from the legislature, the group it put together a decade ago to try and get a gas line built from the North Slope is quickly shedding workers and preparing to back away from that effort.

The effort to bring a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to Nikiski may be running out of gas. Market conditions have changed a lot in the six years since the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation was formed by the legislature. In a presentation to a joint meeting of the Kenai and Soldotna Chambers of Commerce Wednesday, former Borough Chief of Staff Larry Persily, who has tracked this and previous plans for an instate gas line over the years, laid out the numerous challenges that he says make the project next to impossible, at least for now.

The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation spent a lot of 2018 talking about how much progress it was prepared to make on an instate gas line in 2019 and beyond. But investors are still being sought and an environmental impact statement due in February is no guarantee that permits will be issued.