A planned 807-mile pipeline between Prudhoe Bay and the planned Kenai terminal would boost exports and deliver natural gas to remote Alaskans.
President Donald Trump’s Alaska executive actions package not only seeks to expand fossil fuel development in the state but defines a stalled liquified natural gas (LNG) pipeline and marine terminal project—the only one now approved and permitted on the United States’ west coast—as pivotal in anchoring “an energy corridor of critical national importance.”
The sweeping action rescinds “all regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and any other similar agency actions … promulgated, issued, or adopted between Jan. 20, 2021, and Jan. 20, 2025,” essentially erasing 70 Biden-era regulatory actions related to Alaska.
The rollbacks and prioritization aim to accelerate an unnamed project that, in nomination hearings for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, was repeatedly referred to as the “Alaska LNG project.”
AGDC, an independent, state-owned corporation, was established in 2013 by state lawmakers who commissioned it the following year to “develop an Alaska liquefied natural gas project on the state’s behalf.”
Despite the authorizations, proponents maintain 70 Biden executive orders related to Alaska energy development have locked the LNG project in a regulatory limbo.
AGDC maintains Alaska LNG exported primarily to Japan and other Pacific nations would boost U.S. exports by $10 billion a year, chipping away at the nation’s trade deficit, employ up to 10,000 during construction, and create approximately 1,000 permanent operational jobs. “Studies have also shown that each direct job creates a ripple effect in the economy that generates 20 indirect jobs,” it states.
The pipeline, which would be underground except for crossing water bodies such as Cook Inlet and active fault-lines, will have the capacity for “multiple interconnection points … for in-state gas distribution” to remote areas to fuel refining, mining, and industrial development, AGDC’s project description reads.
It would also be a boon to isolated communities without access to natural gas, including Fairbanks, which “does not currently have a pipeline supply of natural gas and has significant air quality issues from the combustion of dirtier fuel sources, particularly in the winter.”
Richards said the project not only offers “significant strategic, economic and environmental benefits” for the nation in general and Alaskans specifically, but “eliminate up to 2.3 billion tons of carbon emissions over the project’s 30-year authorization.”
Only West Coast LNG Terminal
Clearly, however, the Trump administration’s focus is getting the only federally permitted LNG export terminal on the U.S. West Coast “offering direct, canal-free shipping via uncontested waters to Asian markets” off the drawing board and into operation.
The existing Nikiski terminal with an 0.2 Bcf/d capacity was “mothballed” in 2017. ConocoPhillips exported the relatively small amount of Cook Inlet gas to markets in Asia until 2015 but, without pipeline access to North Slope fields, the operation was not profitable.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission lists seven LNG export terminals—four in Texas, three in Louisiana—that are approved and under construction. Another 12 have been approved—five in Louisiana, three in Texas, one each in Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi, and AGDC’s Nikiski terminal—but construction has not begun.
AGDC’s plans outline a 200-acre gas treatment plant in Prudhoe Bay that will include a carbon capture component to remove carbon dioxide from gas, “capture” it, and compress it “for re-injection into the Prudhoe Bay reservoirs.”
The project would require realignment of a 1.3-mile span of Alaska’s Kenai Spur Highway.
Alaska’s Congressional delegation let Burgum, Wright, and Environmental Protection Agency Director nominee Lee Zeldin know the “Alaska LNG project” was a top-shelf priority during their mid-January nomination hearings.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), noting Congress had “approved a loan guarantee for an Alaska gas line,” asked Wright during his Jan. 15 hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee if he would support efforts to “stand up” the project through its regulatory review.
“It should be an easy answer,” she said.
It was.
“To grow natural gas production in Alaska and build infrastructure to export that to the world, given how close it is to the biggest, fastest-growing markets in the world in Asia, I think it’s a tremendous idea,” Wright said. “Great for our country. Great for Alaska.”
