JUNEAU — The state-sponsored corporation promoting development of Alaska’s North Slope gas is still in negotiations to take over a major liquefied natural gas project and will miss its end-of-the-year deadline.
The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation has been working to gain control of the project since BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil decided to stop investing in it because of low oil and gas prices.
Corporation President Keith Meyer told board members Wednesday that negotiations are ongoing and transition agreements won’t come until next year, Alaska’s Energy Desk reported. That means it will be the second deadline the group has missed in its timeline for taking over the liquefied natural gas project, which has been estimated to cost up to $65 billion.
The corporation has secured the rights to all the information developed by the project. It has also informed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that it will go through the permitting process alone.
But Meyer said the group is still working to take over a Department of Energy license that would allow the state to export liquefied natural gas to non-free trade agreement countries. The state also hasn’t said what it plans to do with 630 acres of land on the Kenai Peninsula, which was purchased by the state and its former oil company partners to make way for a natural gas liquefaction plant at the end of the pipeline.
Meyer said those matters are still being negotiated.
