[pf] try#2; Lots of gas already in Alaska, unused; why North Slope?

In Try#1 I said:

· This post is mainly to see whether people have stopped posting, or
whether, as Gary Barrett said to some of us, when he sends a post it never
appears, either sent to him by e-mail, or on the Topica positive-futures
webpage (which is currently unreadable, I can confirm as of 4:30 a.m.
Sunday +1200).   D.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/12/politics/12NOMI.html?ex=990678934&ei=1&en=
ac3433263aa8e07d  [all on same line in browser]


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Now Try#2 (at 6 a.m. Sun.) :-

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10379&newsDate=4-Apr-2001
  is:

Bush stance on Alaska refuge's natural gas puzzles some
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  
USA: April 4, 2001

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Every day, oil producers on Alaska's North Slope pump
up about 8 million cubic feet of natural gas, a by-product of oil
production, and every day they re-inject the gas back into the Earth. 

The reason is that no one has yet committed to buy it and there is no way
to ship it to markets.
So why has President George W. Bush repeatedly argued, as he did in a
recent White House news conference, that oil companies need access to the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northeast Alaska so they can find
yet more natural gas?

As part of its energy policy, the Bush administration is pushing for
Congress to allow oil exploration in the Arctic refuge despite arguments by
environmentalists and indigenous groups that it would despoil a vast
wilderness and harm valuable wildlife.

The push to open up the refuge to obtain natural gas has left industry
experts in Alaska puzzled.

"I'm not sure what he means. Clearly there's lots of stranded gas in the
Arctic, both in Alaska and in Canada. We've got lots of it, and it's not
going anywhere right now," said Chuck Logsdon, chief petroleum economist
for the state of Alaska. "Heck, we've got a whole bunch of it at Prudhoe
Bay that we want to sell."

Known North Slope natural gas reserves total at least 31 trillion cubic
feet, according to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, and more
than two-thirds of that is in the Prudhoe Bay field, where oil companies
have been pumping oil since 1977. It is the nation's largest known but
untapped gas resource, experts say.

Alaska officials have long pushed for some type of pipeline project to
deliver North Slope gas to markets. There are alternate proposals for
overland gas lines to the Lower 48 or a liquefied natural gas system that
would ship the product to buyers by tanker vessel.

Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles and many other officials have endorsed a
proposed overland pipeline that would follow the route of the Alaska
Highway through western Canada to deliver gas to markets in the U.S Midwest.

That project was permitted in the 1970s but has languished for economic
reasons. The major oil companies producing on the North Slope estimate the
cost of building such a system, which would be the largest of its kind in
the world, at $10 billion.

Alaska politicians have come out nearly unanimously against an alternate
proposed pipeline that would run east from Prudhoe Bay, offshore in the
Beaufort Sea, to Canada's gas-rich Mackenzie River Delta. That route would
offer few benefits to Alaskans, the Alaska officials say.

Many see a project delivering Mackenzie River Delta gas to be in
competition with the Alaska project.

But Bush said he has no problem promoting a Canadian gas project.

"There's gas in our hemisphere, and the fundamental question is where's it
going to come from," he said at the news conference. "I'd like it to be
American gas, but if the Congress decides not to have exploration in ANWR,
we'll work with the Canadians."

Matt Berman, a University of Alaska Anchorage economist, said there may be
a public-relations reason that Bush is portraying ANWR as a potential
source of gas instead of oil.

"It must be that some people are afraid of a gas shortage even more than
they're afraid of an oil shortage," he said.

But the drive to drill in ANWR has nothing to do with gas, Berman said.

"I can tell you that oil companies aren't looking for natural gas. They're
looking for oil," he said. Any gas found in ANWR would be only a "side
benefit", and perhaps not commercial even if there were a gas pipeline from
Prudhoe Bay to the Lower 48, he said.

U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who toured the North Slope over the
weekend, said Bush is aware that natural gas is plentiful on North Slope
land already accessible to the industry and is interested in promoting
commercialization.

"At this point, we are looking at a variety of different options, including
ANWR," she said at a gathering Friday in Anchorage.

"His point (at the news conference) was really that we are trying to look
at things in a comprehensive way that provides a lot of different ways so
that we can ensure that we have the energy we need for our economy and our
jobs," she said. 

Story by Yereth Rosen 

REUTERS 

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David. {is GW Bush that stupid, that he doesn't challenge the "advice"?)
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
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