ExxonMobil close to announcement

Kay Cashman

On March 28, a few hours before this issue of PNA went to press, Exxon Mobil Corp. spokesman Bob Davis said his company will be releasing “very, very soon” the results of an internal analysis and review of the North Slope producers’ gas study team results.

“We said we’d be releasing it at the end of the first quarter. We’re on track to do that,” he said.

In conjunction with the release of its analysis, ExxonMobil officials will begin “meetings with both state and federal officials and others to talk about the status” of the North Slope gasline project.

When asked if ExxonMobil’s final price tag on the project was $20 billion, which is what the company’s Chairman Lee Raymond has said publicly, Davis acknowledged that figure was reasonable but did not elaborate.

“The project is still not economic,” he said.

BP and Phillips, the other two major North Slope gas owners and members of the joint gas team, are also expected to release their analysis of the group’s $120 million study near the end of the first quarter.