LNG trailer for Fairbanks undergoing trials

Gas utility Fairbanks Natural Gas is in the process of conducting trials of a prototype liquefied natural gas trailer, designed for transporting LNG by road to the city of Fairbanks from either the North Slope or the Cook Inlet region. The trials of the 75-foot, 13,000-gallon-capacity trailer come as part of the Interior Energy Project, an Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority project to bring affordable energy to Fairbanks and the surrounding Interior.

Fairbanks Natural Gas is part of Pentex Natural Gas Co., a company that AIDEA has temporarily acquired as part of the Interior Energy Project.

AIDEA spokesman Karsten Rodvik told Petroleum News in a Dec. 30 email that the trailer had made three trips between the Titan LNG facility at Point MacKenzie on Cook Inlet and Fairbanks. The trailer will also make a test run from the North Slope to Fairbanks, Rodvik said.

The small Titan LNG facility is owned by Pentex and is currently used for the production of LNG for Fairbanks. The Interior Energy Project is in the process of selecting a company to develop a significantly larger LNG facility, either in the Cook Inlet region or on the North Slope, to bolster gas supplies at an economic price for the Interior. Fairbanks Natural Gas and the Interior Gas Utility, the other Fairbanks gas utility, have been extending the Fairbanks gas distribution pipeline network in anticipation of an expanded gas supply becoming available.

Although Fairbanks Natural Gas already trucks LNG from the Titan facility to Fairbanks, the style of trailer now being tested has a larger capacity than the trailers currently in use. Larger trailers would more economically support the larger volumes of LNG that the Interior Energy Project expects to be delivered to the Interior city.

- ALAN BAILEY