Kenai Peninsula residents are questioning what the governor’s signage of an extension with Japan-based Resources Energy, Inc means for the Alaska LNG project in Nikiski.
Special Oil and Gas Assistant Larry Persily with the Kenai Peninsula Borough says there will be no impact from the state agreeing to continue work with REI.
Persily: “The REI Project is a small LNG plant that’s proposed for Point MacKenzie in the Upper Cook Inlet, in the Mat-Su Borough and REI is looking to obtain Cook Inlet gas for that small plant, not North Slope gas. So certainly if North Slope gas came down close by and was cheaper, they’d be interested in it a little bit but that is a small plant, a fraction of the size that is proposed for Nikiski.”
We asked if the governor’s agreement to keep working on the smaller Point MacKenzie facility is a way to keep Alaska natural gas as a key player in the global LNG market…
Persily: “I think they already know a lot about Alaska, what they want to know is how much is it going to cost to deliver Alaska LNG into the Asian market in the 2020’s and is it really going to happen. That’s what they are really waiting for and REI doesn’t have those answers any more than Alaska LNG has those answers yet.”
Persily says there is still a lot of work to be done on both of those LNG projects before they are even constructed.
