Alaska Sees Asia Driving Annual $20 Billion Via Pipeline

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-23/alaska-sees-asia-driving-annual-20-billion-via-pipeline.html

Alaska wants a $50 billion pipeline and export complex built to develop natural gas that’s stranded on its icy North Slope. The justification: Asia’s swelling appetite for the fuel.

Governor Sean Parnell gave Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), BP Plc (BP/) and ConocoPhillips to the end of this month to provide plans to pipe the gas south and condense it into a liquid, known as LNG, for export. Their joint venture would compete with growing global supplies of LNG coming into markets within two decades from Australia, East Africa, the U.S. Gulf Coast and Canada.


Energy explorers and Alaska’s government are trying for the first time to market a resource that may generate as much as $20 billion in annual gas sales. Asian gas buyers as of July paid almost six times the futures price in the U.S., where it has been driven low by the shale boom.

“It’s gas in search of a market,” Kevin Book, a managing director with Washington-based ClearView Energy Partners, an industry consulting group, said in an interview.