November 2017, Vol. 244, No. 11

Features

Thank Our Lucky Stars Uneconomic Alaska Gas Projects Weren’t Built

Man, did investors and ratepayers dodge a big bullet had an Alaska gas transportation project been built in the 1980s or the early 2000s! We now know that had several thousand miles of new, 48- or 42-inch, high-pressure gas pipelines been constructed to move Alaska North Slope Mackenzie Delta gas following passage of either the 1976 or 2004 Alaska gas pipeline expediting acts, investors might well have lost their shirts. Taxing governments like Alaska could have committed their 12.5% share of royalty gas for a pittance price, not to mention abysmally low severance and income taxes. Utility customers of Alaska gas from San Francisco and Chicago to New York might have been stuck with costly