Critics sighed with relief that the expiring U.S. Congress did not pass an energy bill. Among the items in the bill facing widespread opposition were a mandate and subsidies for an environmentally and economically challenged natural gas pipeline through Alaska.
The bill would have required that a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope of Alaska follow a route south to Fairbanks, then along the Alaska Highway into the Yukon Territory, across British Columbia and into Alberta. The Senate version of the bill included tax subsidies of between $15 billion and $45 billion – subsidies opposed by the American Conservative Union, Taxpayers for Common Sense and the National Environmental Trust.
An alternative proposal by Arctic Resources Co., according to chairman Forrest E. Hoglund, would have the pipeline run offshore from the Alaskan reserves to the Mackenzie River Delta and then through the Mackenzie River Valley to the existing natural gas pipeline interconnects near Edmonton. Among the advantages of that route, according to Hoglund:
Source: Forrest Hoglund (Arctic Resources Co.), High-cost gas pipeline undercuts energy project, Dallas Morning News, November 16, 2002.
For text
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/viewpoints/stories/111602dnedihoglund.61c70.html
For more on National Energy Policy http://www.ncpa.org/iss/ene/
FMF Policy Bulletin\4 December 2002
