Ballot measure No. 3 gets resounding yes from 61% of voters

Kristen Nelson, PNA editor-in-chief

Seventy-two percent of Alaska voters said Nov. 5 that they do not want to have a constitutional convention. And 67 percent said they do not want to move the capital.

But 61 percent of voters favored the third ballot measure in the state’s general election, creating the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority.

Scott Heyworth, sponsor of the successful initiative petition, has said all along that Alaskans favored an all-Alaska gas pipeline, taking gas from the North Slope to Valdez and converting it into liquefied natural gas for sale. Some 117,958 — according to unofficial results the state posted Nov. 6 — proved Heyworth right.

Next step?

The state Legislature would have to fund the authority, which would be part of the Department of Revenue, and which would have one year to prepare a development plan for the project.

The Knowles administration opposed the Valdez route and conversion to LNG, which the North Slope producers studied and chose not to fund, citing plentiful supplies of natural gas in the Pacific Rim — gas which didn’t need an 800-mile pipeline to reach tidewater.

And the incoming Murkowski administration?

Heyworth filed to run as a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, but withdrew and threw his support to Republican candidate for governor Frank Murkowski, who said he would support “any route that takes Alaska’s gas to market.”

Murkowski said he believed an Alaska gas pipeline will put Alaskans to work and said “we should examine gasline options that serve both domestic and Pacific Rim markets, and … take advantage of our opportunity to develop an in-state petrochemical industry to expand and diversify our economy.”

The governor appoints a seven-member board of directors for the gas development authority who are confirmed by the Legislature.