Cracking the Code: Demystifying the Alaska LNG Project.

• Author: Mackenzie, Kathryn
• Position: Oil & Gas

While the Alaska LNG project has been a looming, massive topic of discussion for the last few years, planning for a number of North Slope-to-market, state-spanning natural gas lines has been in process for more than decade. The Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AIGA) was enacted in 2007 and there have been years of subsequent discussion and planning.

Building the Code

In 2007 Cindy Roberts, then-recently-retired from a position at the Denali Commission, volunteered as a staff photographer for a class at UAA presented by Jim LaBelle; the purpose of the class was to present information on how AIGA might impact Alaska Native corporations. Over the course of the class, speakers such as Harold Heinze, Wally Hickel, Vic Fischer, Judy Brady, and Michelle Anderson were invited to explain what the natural gasline was and the affect it would have.

Roberts, like many others, found herself awash in unintuitive pipeline, natural gas, and industry issues and terminology outside the frame of reference of the average citizen. In an effort to help the public better understand the terminology--and therefore the project--Roberts volunteered to compile a guide, or glossary, of more than one hundred terms and thirty background explanations called Cracking the Code--A Citizens Guide to the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline Discussion and the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act. The tear-out glossary, which had already sold 700 copies, was included in the January 2008 edition of Alaska Business Monthly--every issue sold.

Roberts was prompted to publish a second edition in 2012, as various gas pipeline projects were in motion. The revised and expanded edition, Cracking the Code--A Citizens Guide to the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline Discussion, in addition to more terms and background also included special maps with clearly defined route options, coastal areas, and distribution strategies, as well as intelligible information on the geology and chemistry of the project. Roberts says presales financed the 2012 edition, and 1,500 copies of the guide were placed in the hands of media, legislatures, unions, educators, and individual supporters at publication.

Oil and gas is a commodity, and unfortunately for the Alaska LNG project, in 2012 a shift in industry tech and the wide use of hydraulic fracturing impacted the natural gas market. Commercially viable shale gas plays across the Lower 48 changed the supply and demand picture, and Alaska's stranded gas once again seemed to some too...