Plenty of Natural Gas Already Available in Alaska?

Debate over Alaskan refuge gas moot till there's a way to move it
Reuters News Service

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Every day, oil producers on Alaska's North Slope pump up about 8 million cubic feet of natural gas, a byproduct of oil production, and every day they re-inject the gas back into the ground.

The reason is that no one has yet committed to buy it and there is no way to ship it to markets.

So why has President Bush repeatedly argued, as he did in a recent White House news conference, that oil companies need access to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska so they can find yet more natural gas?

As part of its energy policy, the Bush administration is pushing for Congress to allow oil exploration in the arctic refuge despite arguments by environmentalists and indigenous groups that it would despoil a vast wilderness and harm valuable wildlife.

The push to open the refuge to obtain natural gas has left industry experts in Alaska puzzled.

"I'm not sure what he means. Clearly there's lots of stranded gas in the arctic, both in Alaska and in Canada. We've got lots of it, and it's not going anywhere right now," said Chuck Logsdon, chief petroleum economist for the state of Alaska. "Heck, we've got a whole bunch of it at Prudhoe Bay that we want to sell."

Known North Slope natural gas reserves total at least 31 trillion cubic feet, according to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, and more than two-thirds of that is in the Prudhoe Bay field, where companies have been pumping oil since 1977. It is the nation's largest known but untapped gas resource, experts say.

Alaska officials have long pushed for some kind of pipeline project to deliver North Slope gas to markets. There are alternate proposals for overland gas lines to the lower 48 or a liquefied natural gas system that would ship the product to buyers by tanker vessel.

Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles and many other officials have endorsed a proposed overland pipeline that would follow the route of the Alaska Highway through western Canada to deliver gas to markets in the Midwest.

Permits for the project were approved in the 1970s, but it has languished for economic reasons. The major oil companies producing on the North Slope estimate the cost of building such a system, which would be the largest of its kind, at $10 billion.

Alaska politicians have come out nearly unanimously against an alternate proposed pipeline that would run east from Prudhoe Bay, offshore in the Beaufort Sea, to Canada's gas-rich Mackenzie River Delta. That route would offer few benefits to Alaskans, state officials say.

Many see a project delivering Mackenzie River Delta gas to be in competition with the Alaska project.

But Bush said he has no problem promoting a Canadian gas project.

"There's gas in our hemisphere, and the fundamental question is where's it going to come from," he said at the news conference. "I'd like it to be American gas, but if the Congress decides not to have exploration in ANWR, we'll work with the Canadians."

If this is true and there is plenty of natural gas already available, why would we be concentrating on opening such a controversial area for drilling when all we really need is a delivery system? Seems like a real waste of resources.

------------------
And then, depression set in...