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Fairbanks Natural Gas expanding storage
Fairbanks Natural Gas LLC is moving forward with an expansion of its liquefied natural gas facility in Fairbanks, Alaska, the company has announced. The company supplies natural gas to Fairbanks consumers by manufacturing LNG from Cook Inlet natural gas at Point Mackenzie near Anchorage and trucking the LNG to Fairbanks. The LNG is held in the company’s Fairbanks storage facility, before regasification for delivery to the company’s customers.
The expansion project involves adding an LNG storage tank with a minimum capacity of 5 million gallons to the existing 240,000-gallon facility in Fairbanks, with the additional capacity being sufficient to hold enough gas to supply 2,200 homes for one year, the company says.
The idea is to expand the existing gas distribution system to enable more customers to enjoy the cost savings of natural gas relative to fuel oil — the current system has 70 miles of underground pipelines, the company says.
Earlier this year the company extended its Cook Inlet gas supply contract by one year. And the company is trying to establish a new source of LNG from the North Slope: Affiliate company Polar LNG has obtained a certificate from the Regulatory Commission of Alaska for a common carrier line to deliver gas from the Prudhoe Bay field to an LNG plant planned for Deadhorse.
Major role Fairbanks Natural Gas President Daniel Britton says that the LNG storage expansion in Fairbanks would “play a major role in realizing the potential for a new source for LNG from the North Slope or other points in Alaska,” as well as enabling a “redundancy of supply,” should a gas pipeline be built to Fairbanks.
“This substantial investment in storage capacity is a major step in our continuing effort to provide Fairbanks with additional natural gas supplies,” Britton said in a release announcing the storage expansion plan. “This additional storage will provide the capacity necessary to grow and to meet the needs of new customers as well as our important existing customers, including homes, schools and medical facilities.”
During the last legislative session the Alaska Legislature passed a bill that included tax credits for operating LNG storage facilities in the state.
—Alan Bailey
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