Notwithstanding its climate-wrecking impacts, Biden administration officials are pushing a proposed 807-mile gas pipeline across Alaska and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility they say would enhance U.S. national security and economic interests in the Indo-Pacific by assisting allies Japan and South Korea.
At a recent “Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference” organized by Governor Mike Dunleavy, U.S. Ambassador to Japan and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other officials promoted Alaska LNG as a “strategic asset” that could draw Asian allies closer to the U.S. and secure Asian markets for U.S. LNG into the future over competitors Russia and China.
Alaska LNG fills an important safety and security niche for Japan and Korea because it’s a straight shot to transport there from Alaska, and this route avoids “strategic choke points” in Chinese waters, Emanuel said.
While presented as a “temporary” solution, Alaska LNG would lock in an enormous amount of fossil fuel use and production beyond 2050, deepening the climate crisis.
“Every country wants more of America—not just militarily, but the economic statecraft it brings. Because they know firsthand what an unmoored, untied China can do,” Emanuel said.
This geopolitical security plea for the Alaska LNG project ignores the Biden administration’s commitment to a 1.5°C aligned pathway to limit climate change and global warming, as well as the scientific consensus that the climate can’t tolerate existing fossil fuel infrastructure and certainly no more new fossil fuel developments. This project could release up to 2.7 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over its lifetime, and 20 million metric tons of gas per year that could result in more than 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions annually.
While presented as a “temporary” solution, Alaska LNG would lock in an enormous amount of fossil fuel use and production beyond 2050, deepening the climate crisis. Although U.S. LNG exports to Europe were essential to meet the needs of our allies and provided the means to push back against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, shutting down its major markets, the Alaska LNG project wouldn’t come online for at least 10 years so would have no effect on alleviating current shortages.
Although Emanuel asserted that Alaska LNG would help the climate, he and other officials made only a passing mention of the risks, harms, and threats of failing to reverse the trajectory of increasing fossil fuel production.
The Alaska project was described as being “clean” and climate-friendly because its LNG would displace coal use in Asia and has a shorter transportation route compared to LNG from the U.S. Gulf. However, coal is already being phased out, and LNG is a fossil fuel which is not clean energy.
LNG is a false solution that will intensify the climate crisis and increase the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. LNG is methane compressed and chilled to make it easier to transport. Methane emissions are 80 times more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide, in the short term. Methane is notorious for fugitive emissions which are difficult to account for and occur frequently from production to end use.
The project’s economics are shaky, at best. The project’s current configuration, from the North Slope to tidewater with an export facility on the Kenai Peninsula, is optimistically estimated to cost $44 billion. Various configurations of a North Slope gas line have been unable to secure purchase agreements or financing for more than four decades despite massive but apparently insufficient federal loan guarantees that have exacerbated the U.S. debt crisis; the project has long been deemed uneconomic by independent analysts. The major gas producers abandoned the project years ago. All of the major oil companies associated with Alaska North Slope (ANS) gas have written down the value of their ANS natural gas pipeline development costs to zero.
Asian utilities are not waiting on the long-shot Alaska LNG to become even marginally credible as a commercial prospect; Houston-based Cheniere Energy and Korea Southern Power (KOSPO) recently announced a new long-term sale and purchase agreement.
The world already has more than enough methane in production or under development to meet global demand for decades, as well as many more proposed LNG export projects seeking approval that are less costly to develop than Alaska’s North Slope gas.
Other federal officials speaking in favor of the Alaska LNG project included Geoffrey Pyatt, assistant secretary for energy resources at the State Department, and Dave Turk, deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy. Republican officials, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, Gov. Dunleavy, and others on his team echoed similar points in their presentations.
From a climate, as well as an economic, perspective, Alaska LNG exports and the associated gas line are a No-Go. Instead of trying to prop up a dirty, dying industry, the federal and state governments should pursue opportunities to develop renewable energy and stop new fossil fuel developments like Alaska LNG.
