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Environmental groups mount legal challenge to Alaska natural gas export approval
Citing climate impacts, groups seek to block the project that is the latest state-backed plan in a decades-long effort to commercialize stranded North Slope natural gas
A network of pipelines, seen on Aug. 23, 2018, snakes through a portion of the Greater Prudhoe Bay Unit on Alaska's North Slope. Prudhoe Bay and other oil fields hold vast amounts of natural gas that is stranded from markets. The state and industry groups have tried for decades, without success, to develop a pipeline system to deliver that natural gas to customers. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Two environmental groups on Friday asked a federal appeals court to overturn the Biden administration’s approval of exports from Alaska’s yet-unbuilt project that would ship natural gas from the North Slope.
The Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition with the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia that seeks to reverse the Department of Energy approval granted in April to the massive project that would send liquefied North Slope natural gas to Asian markets.
The environmental groups argue that the massive project would unleash too much atmospheric carbon, exacerbating climate change.
“The federal government should not be approving this project at this point in the climate crisis,” said Erin Colón, senior staff attorney for Earthjustice, which is representing the Center for Biological Diversity in the case.
The project is being pursued by the state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corp. The most recent estimated cost is $38.7 billion. It would require a new pipeline running 807 miles from Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope to a tidewater site at Cook Inlet in Nikiski in Southcentral Alaska, where it would be liquefied and loaded onto tankers for ocean shipments.
The AGDC proposal is the current state-endorsed plan for a pipeline that would transport the North Slope’s vast known but currently stranded natural gas resources to the global market. The state and various industry players tried over the past half century to develop some kind of pipeline system to transport that natural gas, which exists at Prudhoe Bay and other oil fields. No plan has so far proved to be justified in terms of profitability.
Spokespeople for the Department of Energy were not available Friday to comment on the environmental groups’ legal challenge.
An AGDC representative, however, said the groups’ criticisms about climate impacts were misguided.
“Alaska LNG will reduce carbon emissions by up to 2.3 billion tons during its 30-year authorization and provide compelling benefits to Alaskans and our global climate. Alaska LNG successfully completed rigorous environmental review across two successive administrations with strong bipartisan backing and, with more than 6,000 pages of federal regulatory analysis, is the most thoroughly examined energy infrastructure project in U.S. history,” Tim Fitzpatrick, head of external affairs, said in an emailed statement.
The three-page petition filed on Friday, considered a new lawsuit, is a precursor to more detailed arguments on the legal merits of the approval, Colón said. Under the federal Natural Gas Act, challenges to permits for projects like this are filed directly in federal appeals courts, starting with such petitions, she said.
Many experts, including those in Alaska and in Asia, consider the prospects for the Alaska LNG project to be dim.
Nonetheless, Colón said, the environmental groups believe their legal action is necessary.
“There will be no later opportunity to challenge the federal permits,” she said, citing permits that have been issued to the AGDC project.
“They have also secured a number of subsidies and subsidy-like measures that make it more and more likely that the project would be built,” she said, cited as an example the project’s access to up to $26 billion in loan guarantees, a provision within the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. “If you subsidize something enough, it will pencil out.”
The LNG export proposal being pursued by the AGDC is just one in a series of North Slope gas pipeline plans that have been floated over the decades.
State, federal and industry officials in the past envisioned an overland pipeline that would carry North Slope natural gas through part of Canada to the U.S. Midwest. Other past plans involved LNG exports from the Prince William Sound port Valdez, site of the marine terminal for the existing trans-Alaska oil pipeline that has been shipping North Slope crude since 1977.
A more recent alternative vision for shipping North Slope natural gas involves LNG plants just offshore from Prudhoe Bay and deliveries in the Arctic and deliveries by icebreaking tankers. That marine-shipment concept is being pursued by an Anchorage-based Qilak LNG. Qilak LNG is promoting its project as a competitor to the Yamal project in Russia, which is served by a fleet of icebreaking LNG tankers.
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