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Energy policies playing out in California can be reversed Head of Williams Companies tells Alliance “Meet Alaska” that Alaska’s gas has a role to play in Lower 48 energy crisis Petroleum News Alaska
Keith Bailey, president, CEO and chairman of The Williams Companies, told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance “Meet Alaska” conference Jan. 26 that Alaska is poised to be a major player in the nation’s current energy crisis, and that Williams wants to play a role in getting Alaska’s natural gas to market.
The company has both refining and retail presence in Alaska, led the consortium that built two northern spreads of the trans-Alaska pipeline and became managing partner in the Alaska Natural Gas Transportation System when it acquired Northwest Energy Co. in 1983, Bailey said.
He said he believes “the time is right for the state to be able to move quickly to achieve the objectives that were outlined in that original project.”
California crisis result of energy choices Bailey said the nation has been making energy choices “for more than two decades without clear understanding of the policy consequences that they carry” including restricting even low-risk resource development on public lands; limiting outputs of existing energy facilities for environmental reasons, even though technology now exists to minimize discharge of pollutants; and preventing the construction of new facilities.
And, he said, because there was no immediate obvious response to those policy decisions, it appeared that we could make these choices without consequences.
But after two decades of such policies, the results are now evident, Bailey said: “The capacity of our energy infrastructure has — from the well head to the street corner and burner tip and at every point in between — come into tight supply-demand balance. We have consumed our reserve. Capital has migrated to more friendly and higher return uses and as a nation we are much closer to the realities that we are seeing played out in California every day than I suspect any of us would like to believe.”
But we aren’t at the point of no return, Bailey said. With the cost and consequences of present policy “clearly displayed for all to see” in California, “I believe at the end of the day, we will choose balances that are enable our economy to grow.”
Williams is one of the largest owner operators of natural gas pipelines in North America, handling some 20 percent of Lower 48 gas demand through 30,000 miles of pipeline in five systems across 30 states.
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