Yukon Pacific challenges LNG data in report

Kristen Nelson

In his presentation to the governor’s Alaska Highway Gas Pipeline Council April 5, Yukon Pacific Corp. President Jeff Lowenfels said an analysis of Alaska gas projects by Purvin & Gertz used generic LNG project data, rather than specifics relevant to an Alaska LNG project, and reached an incorrect conclusion.

Lowenfels said Purvin & Gertz did not connect Yukon Pacific for information on an Alaska LNG project and only recently has Yukon Pacific had an opportunity to analyze the report.

“This is extremely unfortunate,” Lowenfels said in a follow-up letter to members of the council, “because we believe that the report was relied on by the Governor and his staff to conclude that ‘My Way is the Highway.’”

Lowenfels noted in particular that the Purvin & Gertz report concluded wellhead netback to the producers from an LNG project would be 22 cents per million Btu. Doing the same analysis with numbers specific to the Alaska LNG project proposed by Yukon Pacific, Lowenfels said, the amount is more than a dollar.

Gov. Knowles’ spokesman Bob King told PNA April 17 that the governor “received information regarding gasline development from several sources, including Purvin & Gertz, Ziff Energy, Cambridge Energy Research Associates and others, as well as information gathered over the past 7 years in office that he has worked to get a gasline project going.”

“I’d say that his decision in favor of the Alaska Highway route was based less on any of the above experts,” King said, “but on what was best for Alaskans,” including jobs and access to gas for Alaska communities.

“And what project was more likely to get going,” King said, noting that during the first 6 years of his administration “Knowles worked tirelessly in support of an LNG line through Valdez, but despite his efforts and the work of others, the LNG project never penciled out.”

King also said that the governor believes construction of the Alaska Highway line would boost the