Biologists, the socioeconomic team, and project specialists for the Alaska LNG Project gathered in Nikiski Thursday night to address questions from the public.
Socioeconomic team lead Michael Nelson said around 160 people attended and even though the project is over 10 years away from being finished the public was asking…
Nelson: “You know for me, it’s probably schedule. What’s your schedule, when do we get started.”
Nikiski Borough Assemblyman Wayne Ogle attended and said he heard a lot of optimism during the meeting, however…
Ogle: “If it doesn’t go there will just be a lot of disappointment but life will go on, they’ve had booms before here in the Nikiski area and people just go on with life as it is. But there’s a lot of optimism here, I just heard from somebody tonight that the estimates of gas have gone up even higher in some of the fields which indicates that there’s more resources out there than they anticipated before.”
Nikiski resident Wayne Carroll was involved with the installations of the original platforms in Nikiski during the 1960’s and said he is excited to see where the project goes.
Carroll:”There’s a lot of unknowns, putting a large size pipeline across the Cook Inlet, that’s going to be a challenge, other than that the other thing is just building up a business here in the community and it’ll be a large influx of workers to begin with and after the initial construction phase and everything settles down to operation and of course there won’t be hardly anybody here then. But I think it will work out really good for the community, if we plan ahead.”
During this summer the project will be performing geotechnical and geophysical work on and off shore.
Recently the project chose a preferred corridor for the pipeline across Cook Inlet which pushes a little further West than in the original presentation.
