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Lessons From an Arctic Gas Pipe Dream by Hannah Story Brown
Thawing permafrost, disappearing glaciers, shifting and declining wildlife populations: Alaska, the largest and wildest American state by far, is in a slow-motion climate and ecological crisis at an Alaska-sized scale. Are state and federal politicians dreaming up transformative investments in new infrastructure, enabled by tens of billions in subsidies, that will blaze a new trail for Alaska’s future? Yes, they are!
Oh, wait—they just want another pipeline. The same pipeline, in fact, that has been a pipe dream of Alaskan officials since the 1980s, but was never built because of its ballooning costs. Alaska LNG would be a massive gas infrastructure project involving a new gas treatment plant and 807-mile pipeline cutting across the state to transport methane gas from near Prudhoe Bay to a new liquefaction plant and export terminal in the south, west of Anchorage. Dropped a decade ago by BP, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil because of its price tag and remote location, it has been kept nominally alive by the state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corporation. Now, the proposed pipeline has a new developer in Glenfarne, which is also behind yet-unbuilt LNG facilities in Texas and Louisiana.
By Glenfarne’s projection, construction of Alaska LNG could cost up to $55 billion. The real cost, if built, is likely to be much higher. A new report from Public Citizen analyzing the final cost of constructing operating LNG terminals in North America found that the average cost overrun was 59.7 percent. LNG Canada, the project most comparable to Alaska LNG for requiring a custom-built pipeline over hundreds of miles of challenging terrain, ran more than 130 percent over budget. As report authors Lois Parshley and Mekedas Belayneh note, “Alaska’s proposed pipeline route traverses a longer distance, and more severe terrain, in a labor market that is structurally thinner [than LNG Canada].”
Then there is rapidly escalating competition from renewables. Global electricity generated from wind and solar has increased by more than 350 percent since just mid-2020, and surpassed generation from natural gas for the first time in history in April this year. Nations around the world are frantically investing in green energy and industry to defend themselves from energy price shocks; any gas from this pipeline might go begging by the time it’s completed.
Oh, wait—they just want another pipeline. The same pipeline, in fact, that has been a pipe dream of Alaskan officials since the 1980s, but was never built because of its ballooning costs. Alaska LNG would be a massive gas infrastructure project involving a new gas treatment plant and 807-mile pipeline cutting across the state to transport methane gas from near Prudhoe Bay to a new liquefaction plant and export terminal in the south, west of Anchorage. Dropped a decade ago by BP, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil because of its price tag and remote location, it has been kept nominally alive by the state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corporation. Now, the proposed pipeline has a new developer in Glenfarne, which is also behind yet-unbuilt LNG facilities in Texas and Louisiana.
By Glenfarne’s projection, construction of Alaska LNG could cost up to $55 billion. The real cost, if built, is likely to be much higher. A new report from Public Citizen analyzing the final cost of constructing operating LNG terminals in North America found that the average cost overrun was 59.7 percent. LNG Canada, the project most comparable to Alaska LNG for requiring a custom-built pipeline over hundreds of miles of challenging terrain, ran more than 130 percent over budget. As report authors Lois Parshley and Mekedas Belayneh note, “Alaska’s proposed pipeline route traverses a longer distance, and more severe terrain, in a labor market that is structurally thinner [than LNG Canada].”
Then there is rapidly escalating competition from renewables. Global electricity generated from wind and solar has increased by more than 350 percent since just mid-2020, and surpassed generation from natural gas for the first time in history in April this year. Nations around the world are frantically investing in green energy and industry to defend themselves from energy price shocks; any gas from this pipeline might go begging by the time it’s completed.
https://prospect.org/2026/06/25/lessons-from-arctic-gas-pipe-dream/]