State worked access language

Kristen Nelson

Alaska Division of Oil and Gas Director Mark Myers told PNA that both the state administration and the Legislature’s Joint Natural Gas Pipelines Committee, chaired by Sen. John Torgerson, R-Kasilof, worked on the access language in the Senate energy bill.

Myers said after the May 1 state Foothills oil and gas lease sale that access to a gas pipeline for explorers “is a big problem” because of the way contract carrier pipelines work. The state did not believe there were guarantees of access under current FERC statutes and regulations. “And that a disagreement that we had with Phillips, BP and Exxon,” he said.

“The state was insistent,” Myers said, “as much as we could be, on getting specific language in the federal enabling legislation to ensure mandatory expansion” in a gas pipeline. Torgerson’s committee on the gasline “summed it up very accurately,” Myers said, referring to concerns voiced by the joint committee that without federal statutory changes new gas discoveries probably wouldn’t be able to get into a gas pipeline.

“We have similar observations from multiple other sources and multiple other experts in the field.”