At the end of an energy-focused press conference led by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, the president of the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation said AGDC has entered into a framework agreement with a qualified energy producing company for Alaska LNG — a gasline from the North Slope, which will include a Nikiski export facility, a pipeline, and carbon capture components. A formal agreement is expected to be announced soon.
Frank Richards, president of AGDC, said that there are hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas on the North Slope that is being looked at favorably by the market, and the Alaska LNG project has the potential to deliver from a proven source. It has secure economics and is close to Asian markets, and can eliminate up to 1.2 billion tons of global emissions from other sources of energy, he said.
While the current negotiations are private, an announcement is expected within a few months, he said. The next step is a development agreement, and the process is stage-gated, so that all stakeholder parties can manage their risk.
Before Bill Walker became governor in 2014, this is about where the Alaska gasline project was. But Walker wanted the communist Chinese to finance the gasline and become the major customer for the product, with a guaranteed contract for the gas that would be exported.
That ended when Mike Dunleavy became governor in 2018 and cut the negotiations with the Chinese government, Bank of China, and Sinopec.
Now, six years later, it’s back to a private-sector-financed project, with just two years left in the Dunleavy Administration to nail down the $44 billion project that has been talked about for generations in Alaska.
