The tale of two pipelines.

• Author: McCorkle, Vern C.

One of the biggest stories of the year actually has roots that go back to last November when 62 percent of voting Alaskans, (138,000 of them, by a 2-to-1 margin,) created the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority (ANGDA) by approving Proposition No. 3 through which voters mandated the state to get on about the business of marketing Alaska North Slope (ANSI gas, posthaste. Alaska has ownership rights to a 12.5 percent royalty share (4.4 trillion cubic feet) of the better than 35 tcf of known reserves.

The 800-mile ANGDA pipeline will run from the North Slope to Valdez, entirely within Alaska, paralleling the trans-Alaska oil pipeline with construction starting as early as 2006 and be online by 2010 at a projected cost of $12 billion.

But there is another pipeline proposal: the Tony Knowles' "My Way is the Highway" 3,600-mile line that ANS producers favor. It parallels the 1,520-mile-long Alaska Highway, although only 800 miles would be within Alaska. It is designed to connect to the North American natural gas grid at Alberta, Canada, and then run south to Chicago. Projected cost is $19 billion. Construction for this line will be delayed until at least 2013, ANS producers say, and take 10 years to build. BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil, all of whom have time-critical use-it-our-lose-it clause contracts for developing gas projects...