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Spur line project out for bid Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority is looking for wetlands determination from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for gas spur line Eric Lidji Petroleum News
Temporarily excluded from the on-going state deliberations over a future natural gas pipeline, the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority is still moving forward on its spur line to Southcentral and now wants to prepare for the early permitting required for the project.
In the largest project ever put out to bid by the state agency, ANGDA is looking for a contractor to study the wetlands along a proposed route from Delta Junction to the Beluga gas fields in northern Cook Inlet.
The goal is to get a favorable determination from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for issuing a wetlands permit.
“This represents, for ANGDA, the next major step for completing this project,” Harold Heinze, ANGDA CEO, said at a pre-proposal conference on March 5.
ANGDA plans to spend between $1.2 million and $2 million on the project, which, at the full $2 million, would account for 40 percent of the total ANGDA budget in 2008.
The 370-mile corridor for the spur line would roughly follow the trans-Alaska oil pipeline from Delta Junction to Glennallen, then head west along the conditional right-of-way lease from Glennallen to Palmer issued to ANGDA back in July 2006, and finally head south to the Beluga gas field along one of several proposed routes from Palmer.
Those routes include following existing Enstar Natural Gas right of way, the Parks Highway or the intertie at Port MacKenzie.
“It’s only in the Palmer to Beluga segment that we have any alternatives,” Heinze said.
Contract to be awarded March 28 The project went out to bid at the end of February and ANGDA will award the contract on March 28. At the pre-proposal conference, Heinze said around 11 companies had already expressed interest in the project.
Heinze called it a “turnkey operation,” meaning contractors will be responsible for every part of the project, including getting access to state and Native land along the proposed route.
ANGDA will award the contract based largely on whichever proposal inspires the most confidence of getting a favorable determination from the Army Corps of Engineers, according to Kaye Laughlin, an ANGDA consultant.
“We want to be able to get the permits. We don’t want to go back and do the work twice,” Laughlin said.
ANGDA is a public corporation of the state, created by voter mandate to bring North Slope natural gas to market, and as a result, Heinze asked potential contractors to think about the project differently.
“This whole work product will be in the public realm,” Heinze told potential contractors. “It has to be intelligible to the public.”
Spur line project Earlier in the year, the state dismissed the ANGDA application for the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act because it did not connect to North Slope gas resources.
ANGDA then hoped to piggyback on a full application for an in-state gas pipeline from the Alaska Gasline Port Authority, a municipal group, but the state also dismissed that proposal, as well as a subsequent request to reconsider.
When the ANGDA board of directors approved the wetlands delineation project in January, it seemed like a way to move forward with the proposed spur line, designed to connect to any future main pipeline running from the North Slope.
The board also proposed spending an additional $1 million to study alternative pipeline designs from a geotechnical standpoint to account for ice, discontinuous permafrost and the long term affects of climate change.
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