We'll keep the Alaska gas pipeline cost secret, Glenfarne says

Glenfarne now says that it won’t reveal how much the proposed gas pipeline cost has climbed beyond the outdated $44 billion estimate.

Only a pipeline salesman with little experience in Alaska would think this is a good idea.

KDLL reports that Glenfarne president Adam Prestidge predicts the revised estimate won’t be “significantly more expensive,” but the company will attempt to keep it a secret.

“You wouldn't normally be publishing publishing costs for a project – for a private project, kind of on a recurring – rolling updates,” he said. “And so the ultimate cost to complete is going to be something that is most likely not going to be made public.”

Howard Luttnick, the Trump commerce secretary, has claimed that Trump will be able to order Japan to pay fo the project regardless of how much it costs under his alleged tariff deal with Japan.

“Alaska pipeline, scale, $50 billion, $100 billion, Donald Trump wants to unleash the Alaska pipelines. The Japanese will finance it. And it’s great for America. It’s fantastic,” Lutnick said in early September.

An independent analysis early this year said the project could cost $70 billion and the negotiations would probably fail.

Alex Munton, Rapidan’s director of global gas and LNG, was quoted as saying that “we doubt they will translate into binding financial commitments and our base case is that the project will not reach a final investment decision.”

“Glenfarne says construction costs are only one part of the equation. Prestidge says steel tariffs and the cost of liquefied natural gas will ultimately dictate final project costs, and Glenfarne thinks its commercially viable.”

Steel tariffs are unknown because Donald Trump is unreliable. And the cost of the gas is not known because no one knows how much it will cost to build this complex project.

All of this casts doubt on the repeated claims that a final decision on building the pipeline, repeated by most of Alaska’s politicians, will be made by the end of the year.

Next thing we’ll be told that the final decision to build or not to build will be secret as well.

One reason this attempt at secrecy is outrageous is that the pipeline company is looking for federal government subsidies, though the scheme described by Luttnick will be pitched under another name.

The attempted secrecy on this is absurd. The Dunleavy administration and the Congressional delegation should inform Glenfarne of the error of its ways.