Supporters push for more consideration of Valdez LNG site.

• Author: Persily, Larry
• Position: OIL & GAS

Long-time proponents of building a natural gas liquefaction plant and marine terminal at Valdez have filed 210 pages of comments and backup material with federal regulators, calling for a "more robust analysis" of environmental, cost, and construction factors that they say favor Valdez over the Alaska LNG project's preferred site in Nikiski.

In their filing with FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), advocates for building the LNG (liquefied natural gas) plant at Valdez called on regulators to closely follow federal environmental law and require the project developer "to produce sufficient data and analysis to objectively compare the Valdez alternative and the Nikiski alternative."

The Alaska Gasline Port Authority, a seventeen-year-old municipal government partnership between the city of Valdez and the Fairbanks North Star Borough, has long promoted a North Slope natural gas pipeline to Valdez, with an LNG plant and marine terminal to serve Asian export markets. Joining the port authority in signing the FERC filing were the City of Valdez and the mayors of the Fairbanks Borough, City of Fairbanks, and City of North Pole.

"The Valdez alternative offers several advantages over the Nikiski alternative, none of which have been acknowledged or analyzed" by the Alaska LNG team, including following the trans-Alaska oil pipeline right-of-way from the Prudhoe Bay fields to Valdez, the February 1 filing said.

Federal Law Requires Review of Alternatives

Support for Valdez instead of Nikiski is not a new development. The City of Valdez and Fairbanks North Star Borough in fall 2015 each submitted separate comments to FERC, touting the benefits of building the LNG plant in Valdez, site of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline terminus and marine terminal.

Nikiski is about 60 air miles southwest of Anchorage, on Cook Inlet. Valdez is about 120 air miles due east of Anchorage, at the end of Valdez Arm in Prince William Sound. The gas pipeline route to Valdez would follow the oil pipeline right-of-way, while the route to Nikiski would veer away from the oil line north of Fairbanks, about halfway on its 800-mile run to tidewater.

Just as support for putting the LNG terminal in Valdez is not new, neither is the work to include the alternative in the project's EIS (environmental impact statement). Federal law requires the EIS to consider all reasonable alternatives for pipeline routing and construction, the LNG plant site, and most every other aspect of the...