The waiting game: Alaskans still holding out for a gas pipeline.

• Author: Liles, Patricia

Many Alaskans held hope that 2005 would be the year that the long-awaited natural gas pipeline project to commercialize vast supplies of North Slope gas would become a reality, if only on paper.

With three separate entities submitting formal gas pipeline development proposals to the state of Alaska under the Alaska Stranded Gas Development Act in 2004 and 2005, the odds seemed to be in favor for the start of a public and legislative review process of a negotiated contract.

Yet throughout the fall and into the last few weeks of 2005, Alaskans continued to wait to review a long-touted proposed gas pipeline contract with North Slope oil producers.

Additionally, a memo questioning the legality of some of the state's negotiating positions was released in late October, resulting in termination of the commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources and the resignation of six state employees working on the gas line negotiations.

Earlier announcements that a special legislative session would be called in 2005 to address a gas pipeline project contract appeared to be false hopes.

"We are running out of time to meet our goal of holding a special session this year," said Chuck Logsdon, an Alaska Department of Revenue petroleum economist who was selected in mid-2005 to serve the administration as a gas line advisor.

Logsdon's comments came in late October, less than a week after Gov. Frank Murkowski held a press conference to announce that one of the three North Slope oil producers, which together submitted a gas pipeline project plan to the state of Alaska in late 2004, had reached agreement on "base fiscal contract terms" the administration proposed to the producers in early October.

"We don't have agreement with all of the producers," Logsdon said, on Oct. 26. "But we're a little bit closer."

In a Fairbanks press conference held Oct. 21, Murkowski appeared with representatives from ConocoPhillips to announce that the state has "reached agreement" on the "base fiscal contract terms on a natural gas pipeline contract."

"This is a significant milestone-and there are other positive signs on the horizon. Additional work remains," Murkowski said in the press release.

Jim Bowles, president of ConocoPhillips Alaska, said negotiations with the state had been "long and difficult," and that the agreement included "all essential elements for a fiscal contract, including the six principals laid out by the governor as critical for the deal to advance."

In...