The US Federal Regulatory Energy Commission has granted an authorization for the plan sponsored by the Alaska Gasline Development Corp to build a massive pipeline project to ship natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope to markets. The state agency proposes to build a pipeline system about 800 miles long that would ship North Slope natural gas to southern Alaska’s Cook Inlet, where the gas would be liquefied and then shipped on tankers to Asian markets. Volumes shipped in the pipeline would be up to 3.9 billion cubic feet a day, and the project would produce up to 20 million metric tons of LNG for export each year. The cost is estimated at over $43 billion. The project could generate around 18,000 jobs during construction and about 1,000 new jobs during its 30-year operational life.
