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In a Wall Street Journal article, incoming Republican state Speaker of the House Mike Chenault is quoted as saying the chances of a gas line plan moving forward in the next couple of years are less than 50-50.
"I'm looking at the gas supply needs of North America and if you look at gas prices they are dropping," he said. "So as the gas prices continue to drop we will see less and less of the demand for that amount of gas from Alaska."
Chenault said the companies are going to continue to move towards an open season. "At that time the decision will be made whether anyone will want to commit their gas to a 30-year project," he said.
But will that open season be successful? Or will the market have cooled and demand have dropped off? "The crystal ball isn't that clear," Chenault said. "I think that certainly the price of the product will be a big factor and what the economy looks like."
Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin said even though the natural gas market is cooling now, projections show a drastically different situation in the future. "I feel very confident we will continue to move forward," Irwin said. "In the next 10-15 years the United States and we Alaskans are going to desperately
The Lower 48 natural gas market is currently overrun, but production sources are expected to dwindle. "And even if we look at Canada, that's a major exporter of gas to the U.S., we see their production falling off and we feel good about the market," Irwin said. "That doesn't mean we don't have to be wise about it and we will be."
Irwin says he
And while the demand for Alaska's gas is supposedly cooling, there still seems to be international interest in it.
The Russian gas monopoly Gazprom has begun negotiations with ConocoPhillips to produce natural gas on the North Slope.
BP announced back in April that it would invite a third party to develop the North Slope field.
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