A Citizen’s Guide

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Tuesday she was “very concerned” about the state’s prospects of getting a natural gas pipeline built from the North Slope.

“I’m worried,” she said during an interview with the News-Miner. “As an Alaskan, I’m worried.”

Murkowski said she believed the state had a “window of opportunity” to sell North Slope gas into a Lower 48 market before that market was filled by nuclear power, gas shipped from abroad or coal.

“I am afraid that that market, for us, is slipping,” she said.

Murkowski said one had to respect the process Gov. Sarah Palin created with the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, but she expressed concern that the state’s three major oil and gas leaseholders were not on board with the approach.

“The fact that you don’t have the producers — who appear to be willing participants — in the AGIA process is what I think we all find of great concern,” she said. “You can build a pipeline, but it doesn’t get your gas to market if you don’t have the gas to go in it.”

The three producers all said during legislative testimony on AGIA that they could not comply with the requirements spelled out in the bill, which sets up a competitive bidding process for a state license to build the pipeline.

Murkowski said she has encouraged the administration and producers to “sit down, talk, make it work.”

“I believe that the way that we get the gas line is when you have all of the participants working together to make it happen,” she said, “and ‘all of the participants’ includes the producers.”

Joe Balash, a special assistant to the governor, defended the state’s approach. He said the administration recognized the timeliness of getting a gas line and was trying to move quickly with AGIA, but didn’t agree with the assertion that the market was closing for Alaska gas.

“We are very much aware of the fact that the sooner, the better,” he said. “We’re just not willing to surrender the state’s sovereignty.”

Balash said the administration solicited input from the producers during the drafting of AGIA and made changes to the bill based on their comments.

He said there was nothing in the new law that stopped the producers from applying for the license or forced them to move ahead with an uneconomic project if they were chosen to build the line.

Applications under AGIA are due Nov. 30.

Contact staff writer Stefan Milkowski at 459-7577.