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Gas pipeline office closing up shop, Britt leaving for unrelated reasons No funding for GPO anticipated from state, North Slope producers or pipeline group, so office will close end of August Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
Bill Britt, the state’s Gas Pipeline Coordinator, told PNA May 28 that he informed his staff last week that he would be leaving the Gas Pipeline Office June 14, a move he had planned for some time.
Later that same day, Britt said, he found out that Foothills Pipe Lines Inc. would be withdrawing funding for the office. GPO staff were informed May 23, he saida.
Foothills was acting on behalf of the Alaskan Northwest Natural Gas Transportation Co., a consortium of pipeline companies that wants to build a gas pipeline to carry North Slope gas to market along a route that would track the trans-Alaska oil pipeline to Delta Junction, then follow a federally approved route along the Alaska Highway to northern Alberta.
Most of the GPO funding came from Foothills, Britt said, with some fiscal year 2002 money from the state general fund and some from the producers’ consortium.
But no money is anticipated in FY 2003 from either the general fund or the producers, so the GPO will go away.
“We started the office to expedite permitting and expedite the process,” Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Pat Pourchot told PNA May 29.
“It was working, but you need applicants to make it work. We’re not going to spend time and money on something the applicant is not ready for,” he said.
“Foothills involved the termination clause in the reimbursement MOU and that’s a 90-day clause, so it’s actually closer to the end of August” that the office needs to be closed, Britt said. Fourteen state employees impacted About 14 state employees are affected. The number is not precise because GPO has had portions of time from Department of Environmental Conservation and federal Department of Transportation employees.
The employees will be job hunting and Britt said he will be looking for other jobs for them. “It’s certainly my hope that I can create soft landings for every one of them,” he said.
Britt will be leaving to do what he and his wife have had planned, he said: he will manage a remodel of their home, watch their son and do some consulting on the side. What’s lost The governor still believes this resource on the slope won’t be bundled up forever, the governor’s spokesman Bob King told PNA May 29.
“It will find its way to market, but only when there’s a project that pencils out,” King said.
“Ramping up an agency like this is not an easy thing to do and we have a considerable investment of energy into this … and much of that investment will disappear ... and have to be recreated,” Britt said.
The governor authorized the GPO about a year and a half ago, he said, and it actually got going toward the end of last summer.
The agency started with four employees. A full organization would have been around 70.
Foothills Pipe Lines Alaska Inc. is the successor and agent for the entity that began the right of way permitting process some 20 years ago and Britt said a lot of effort has been determining which of those old records still have meaning and which are just historic.
Foothills has also submitted information recently, and Britt said he will be asking senior staff for status memos on what is where and what is significant.
“Now the exercise will be to archive those files in such a fashion that when this ramps up again the next gas pipeline office won’t have to go through what we had to go through.”
“The work done to date will be valuable when the stars come into alignment,” King said.
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