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Village corporations seek pipeline help Coalition controls 100 miles of gas line route along Alaska Highway, wants partner to help pursue jobs, training for megaproject Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
A coalition of Alaska Native village corporations is seeking help in pursuing employment and other opportunities should a natural gas pipeline be constructed through their region.
The four corporations are arrayed along the Alaska Highway between Delta Junction and the border with Canada.
The coalition includes the Dot Lake, Northway, Tetlin and Tanacross village corporations. They are united as Din e’h LLC. State records show the limited liability company was organized on June 16 of this year.
Din e’h translates to “the people” in the Athabascan language of the Upper Tanana River valley.
Din e’h published an advertisement in the Oct. 11 edition of the Anchorage Daily News saying the group was “seeking a partner experienced in large project construction to provide capability, capacity, and proven performance for a joint venture in gas pipeline bidding processes.
“The goal is to create jobs, train workers, and encourage long-term economic opportunities for the Alaska Native people of the Upper Tanana.”
The group planned to talk with qualified firms at an Oct. 24 meeting in Anchorage.
Belinda Thomas, general manager for Din e’h, told Petroleum News in an Oct. 20 e-mail the group had attracted several midsized and large contenders for the work.
Din e’h is looking for “teaming partners” who have “a strong commitment to local capacity building,” Thomas said.
According to the group’s newspaper ad, the four villages together own the surface estate of about 100 miles of the gas pipeline route between Delta Junction and the Canadian border.
Competing gas line projects The four Native village corporations are among many localities likely to seek jobs or other benefits should major energy companies succeed in building a multibillion-dollar pipeline to carry the North Slope’s prodigious natural gas reserves to market.
The project has been a dream of Alaska economic development boosters for decades, but the extreme cost and complexity of the project coupled with weak gas prices have kept the project from happening.
Currently, two competing projects are in the planning stages, with both aiming to hold open seasons next year to test interest among producers for signing long-term contracts to ship gas through a pipeline.
Both projects would follow the Alaska Highway into Canada, passing through the Din e’h region.
One project, called Denali, involves partners ConocoPhillips and BP. Pipeline operator TransCanada and ExxonMobil are teaming on the other project.
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