Coming up this week is an opportunity for public comment on transparency into the AK LNG gasline project. The Senate Resources Committee will take public comments on Wednesday at 3:30pm on Senate Bill 275, the Alaska Gasline Transparency & Accountability Act. This bill would begin to shed light on the opaque deals underpinning the Alaska LNG project. It would require legislative approval for the state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corporation to make any further divestment from the project’s subsidiaries, require AGDC to disclose on a website the project’s owners and investors, and ensure that privately-owned companies involved in LNG will pay corporate income tax, as well as create a surcharge of 15 cents per thousand cubic feet for natural gas liquefaction.
“It is increasingly uncertain whether Alaskans can expect net gains from a gasline,” state the bill’s sponsors, the Senate Resource Committee. “The massive influx of outside workforces and business activity will burden Alaska’s already-fragile public services while also increasing costs of housing, goods, and essential services. Without changes to law, it’s not clear that the state will see substantial new revenue from this project that could offset these costs.”
Inletkeeper supports SB 275. Previous legislation gave AGDC sweeping unilateral power to make deals and keep secrets. Now we’re seeing the downside. The secret agreement under which AGDC gave private developer Glenfarne 75% of the project in early 2024 exposes the state to unknown risks, in addition to raising questions about what value the state will receive for the nearly $1 billion in public money spent on pipeline efforts since the early 2000s.
An essential transparency issue that the legislation doesn’t address is how much North Slope gas piped to the Railbelt could cost. Answering this question requires an accurate estimate of the pipeline’s capital cost. Glenfarne has the most rigorous and up-to-date guess of this cost from their Front End Engineering and Design study, but they are keeping it secret. I have never seen a credible estimate of AK LNG’s phase 1 gas cost. Making any decisions about the project before getting an answer to this basic question is an invitation to disaster. You can read more in this blog entry I recently wrote for Inletkeeper.
You can also listen to the meeting here and send written comments at any time to Senate.Resources@akleg.gov.
Public testimony on annual net metering in Senate Labor and Commerce
On Friday at 1:30pm, the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee is hearing invited testimony on SB 150, which would create net metering on an annual rather than monthly basis. This would improve the economics of distributed solar and incentivize larger systems.
How to give public testimony
To give public comments on Senate Bill 275, you’ll need to contact your local Legislative Information Office to ask for a call-in number for the hearing. Here are detailed instructions for how to call in to the meeting.
Closing a tax loophole in Senate Finance
On Wednesday at 9am the Senate Finance Committee is having its first hearing on Senate Bill 227, a fiscal bill that includes closing the tax loophole that allows Hilcorp, as a privately owned corporation, to avoid paying corporate income taxes in Alaska. Closing this loophole is an obvious first step in repairing our state’s systemic revenue shortfall. Similar bill text was included in another Senate bill, SB 92, before the Senate Resources committee inserted it into its version of SB 227. Read this blog post for more on Inletkeeper’s support for closing the loophole, and listen to the hearing here.