Understanding the debate about Alaska and the oil industry
The U.S. House passed the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act today, which prohibits the federal government from working with companies that fuel the conflict in Darfur and allows state governments to do the same without worrying about lawsuits. Read the rest of this entry »
Yereth Rosen takes an interesting angle on the budget announcements today: projected production declines and expectations of lower oil prices.
At the Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce meeting today, both Sen. Gary Wilken and Rep. Mike Kelly expressed some concern about oil prices being even lower than state projections, and wondered about subsequent budget shortfalls if that ends up being the case.
ConocoPhillips plans to spend $1 billion on exploration and production in Alaska this year, part of a $15.3 billion capital budget. Read the rest of this entry »
ConocoPhillips wants to start negotiating a natural gas contract with the state before the end of the year, company executives said Wednesday.
The negotiations would be the first step in what the company believes is the “fastest way to a pipeline,” according to Brian Wenzel, vice president of Alaska North Slope Gas Commercialization for ConocoPhillips Alaska. If ConocoPhillips received legislative approval during the upcoming regular session, the company believes it can start field work on a pipeline by next summer and finish pipeline construction by 2018.
But ConocoPhillips is competing against four other natural gas pipeline applications submitted through the process outlined in the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, or AGIA, created by the same government officials with whom ConocoPhillips hopes to negotiate. Read the rest of this entry »
The five companies applying to build a natural gas pipeline in Alaska vary from a multinational oil firm, to a leading pipeline company, to homegrown municipal and state entities, to a big question mark.
Even the government officials announcing the applicants seemed short on information about AEnergia LLC.
While the company is less than a week old, AEnergia’s employees have been working on a natural gas pipeline for nearly 30 years, according to Bill Burkhard, an AEnergia executive based in Sacramento, Calif.
He began working on the original natural gas pipeline project in the late 1970s as an earth scientist, flying up to Alaska at the end of construction on the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, when North Slope natural gas production seemed both imminent and inevitable.
“We’ve been actively pursuing this thing for a long time,” Burkhard said Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »
The original murmuring about Sinopec revolved around foreign ownership of the pipeline and shipping American natural gas abroad, but the Darfur angle seems to be gaining the most momentum.
Ethan Berkowitz, former state legislator and current candidate for the U.S House of Representatives, raised his concerns today about Sinopec’s work in Sudan. Here’s the press release: Read the rest of this entry »
News-Miner reporters Stefan Milkowski and Eric Lidji bring you up-to-date info about the governor's oil tax and
the gas line plans as well as tossing in some tidbits that have nowhere else to go.
Head into the Pipe.