Larry Wood, Alaska Dispatch

Bill Walker’s gas pipeline to Valdez is much more than just a pipe dream. It is a game changer for resource development in Alaska.

Resource development in Alaska has largely been a policy of resource extraction. Rarely has there been any effort on the part of our State government to encourage industry to process the raw materials in-state, thereby creating additional industry and jobs beyond just the extraction of the resource.

Since 1978, North Slope crude oil has exited the State beginning at 1.2 million barrels per day, now down to 600,000 bpd and declining at a rate of 6 percent per year. TAPS continues to gush oil into supertankers that carry it to refineries along the West Coast, and, over the course of the history of TAPS, as far away as Japan. Obviously, 20 billion barrels of oil were not processed within the borders of Alaska, thereby denying Alaskans jobs and industry.

Yearly, at least $432 million in wages hemorrhage from the State of Alaska to the Outside from our migrant oil workers on the North Slope. Even after 40 years of training programs, UAA engineering programs, vocational school programs, all to serve the North Slope oil industry’s demand for “trained workers.”

Only in the Cook Inlet oil and gas fields has there been some degree of value-added resource development of our hydrocarbon resources, beyond local use of fuels from our two small refineries. The fertilizer plant at Nikiski was an outstanding example of value added resource development. Unfortunately, the Nikiski plant closed due to the fluctuating gas supply situation in the Cook Inlet gas fields. Yet, it served notice that in-state value-added resource development of our hydrocarbon resources was possible.

The paradigm change in Walker’s pipeline is the intent to separate the gas liquids for use in Alaska. The gas liquids will provide plastic feed stock for industry and additional fuels for local and Bush use on an industrial scale. The industry that will arise from in-state separation of the gas liquids will result in year-round industry creating new non-government, well paying jobs. Walker’s pipeline will provide the basis for an expansion of the private sector.
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