'Build the line!' With what?
Build the line with what? Marks asks.
It’s a question that won’t be answered. What we have instead is a slogan, an exclamation point and no one willing to finance the largest energy project in North America.
In these five paragraphs, Marks punctures the “Build the Line!” balloon.
There is absolutely no evidence of any entity willing to finance the Alaska LNG project. And this makes perfect sense. Because of the conditioning and pipeline costs, Alaska LNG would cost consumers in Asia upward of $25 billion more than gas from competing supplies.
Yes, there are memorandums of understanding agreeing to look at it. There are manufacturers willing to provide steel and ships if somebody buys them. There are agreements to provide union labor if the workers get paid. There are oil and gas field service companies ready to capitalize if it is bankrolled by someone else. But no one has said they are willing either to finance or buy Alaska’s overpriced gas. This has been the problem for almost 50 years. Tax relief does nearly nothing to ameliorate this.
Because people are willing to believe what they want to be true, telling people what they want to believe is a proven model for getting them to believe it. “Build the Line” is being sold to the support industry, which can tell its members they are getting jobs. Same with the unions. And it is being promoted to consumers who hope for lower gas bills and citizens hoping for higher state revenues.
Whipping up this illusion that we are one modest legislative bill away from an economic boom allows politicians, the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. and Glenfarne to amass a constituency and a power base. Politicians can depict anyone who opposes the measure as anti-development. For future endeavors, the governor can claim he enabled the pipeline. AGDC can assure its continuity. Glenfarne, which has been struggling for years to sanction an LNG project in Texas, is seeking property tax relief there as well and can leverage what it gets in Alaska for an advantage.
The memo between AGDC and Glenfarne that leaked a few weeks ago showed how Glenfarne could extract from the state any value from the reduced property tax, regardless of whether the line is built. There must be more unleaked documents. Given all the agreements that we don’t know about, the public has no idea if there are other mechanisms to exploit the charade that the project is viable in order to obtain more public money.
In contrast to the level-headed analysis from Marks, there is a steady stream of AI-generated slop from legislators and business groups aimed at creating the constituency and power base that will find gas line villains to denounce when the pipeline isn’t built.
We have all sorts of candidates who think that their ability to chant “Build the Line!” is their ticket to election victory.
“Time to set aside the extraneous bill-killing provisions and build the pipeline,” bleats Rep. Kevin McCabe.
McCabe said that everyone he talked to on a drive to Fairbanks agrees that we need a gas line. And someone should pay for it! He should have asked everyone he talked about who would pay for “THE THE LINE!”
When you can’t get your three-word slogan right, you’ve got a problem!
“Today the Capitol may be quiet, but I believe the message from Alaskans is loud and clear: Build the line,” claims Rep. Justin Ruffridge.
“Protect Alaskans. Build the line,” claims wannabe governor Dave Bronson.
There are dozens of examples of politicians spouting the same three words and pretending they mean business. But Alaska is not divided between “Build the Line!” and “Don’t build the Line!” factions.
The Alaska Support Industry Alliance is giving us a taste of what is to come by running a sleazy attack ad against Sen. Scott Kawasaki, claiming he wants to kill the pipeline.
“If he gets his way, the gasline dies and so does the chance to deliver affordable energy to Interior utilities,” the ad says, according to a text sent to alliance members by Rebecca Logan, the CEO of the group.
Logan claims Kawasaki is pushing “millions in new oil and gas taxes that would kill this project.”
“Tell Senator Kawasaki: pass a clean gasline bill. Don’t risk the spur line.”
Logan said the “ad is specific to Senator Kawasaki as he is supportive of adding an oil tax to the bill that ensures it will not pass.”
It would not ensure it will not pass. If Dunleavy were to veto a bill that contains a provision to close the Hilcorp loophole, which Dunleavy supported in 2021, that’s on him.
Logan says the alliance supports no new taxes on the oil and gas industry. Of course.
Roger Marks is right. “Because people are willing to believe what they want to be true, telling people what they want to believe is a proven model for getting them to believe it.”
If only the pipeline could be built with a bubble-headed slogan and an exclamation point plastered on billboards, hats, bumper stickers, pins and campaign fodder.
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