North Country Strategies: Alaska Natural Gas in International Politics.

• Author: TREADWELL, MEAD

Getting North Slope gas to market should be a priority of the state and the nation.

Remember the refrain "Every which way but loose...."?

In Alaska, we know it well. Our North Slope natural gas has been tugged in almost every direction since its discovery in 1968 and completion of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in 1977. But to all points of the compass, North Slope gas has vet to make it to market.

Some, from 1968 until now, would take it south to tidewater to North American or Asian markets. Others would take the gas southeast, overland, via an Alaska Highway route through Canada to U.S. markets.

Yet others, then and now, would go east, across the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the Beaufort Coast, to join McKenzie Valley pipelines for the same markets.

Some have studied going west, through the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, to more accessible Chukchi or Bering Sea ports for LNG (liquefied natural gas) export to Asia or North America.

Even the concept of going north, in LNG submarine tankers, has been promoted by shipbuilders in both the U.S. and Russia. The gas would be transported under the ice to the markets of Europe.

North, south, east, west is not the whole of it.

There's down: 6,000 feet to 8,000 feet in the ground, where the gas produced with oil has been re-injected to provide pressure in the reservoir to promote additional oil recovery. Some have argued all along that delaying a gas sale helps Alaska earn more from oil.

There's also up-into space: A few years ago Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, told an Anchorage audience that North Slope gas should be used right where it is to power a giant laser that would reach outside the atmosphere to knock down ballistic missiles aimed at the American homeland. During peacetime, it was suggested, gas could be exported by wire as electricity.

The Unsolved Mystery

One of the great "unsolved mysteries of the Arctic," to steal polar explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson's phrase, is whether, how, where and when this giant gas resource--the largest in North America--will find a market.

The fact Alaska is surrounded by other nations will most certainly have international effect: Supply, demand, construction materials, financing and politics all play a role.

That leads to a companion mystery: What strategy should the State of Alaska-and the United States-pursue in both national politics and in international affairs to finally bring about a gas sale from Prudhoe Bay?

Blindsided in the International Market

The cold truth is this: Whatever strategy has been tried to date has failed. We can't quit trying, so it would be more charitable to say Alaska's strategy to date has just not yet been successful. But whether the target market has been North America or Asia, we seem to have been blindsided by international politics...