Palin's Blown Opportunity on Energy Independence

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A central gas facility located in the Prudhoe Bay field on Alaska's North Slope, which was proposed as a starting point for an Alaska Gas pipeline to the Lower 48 states.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1849383,00.html


Sarah Palin promises to focus on energy independence if she becomes vice president, a mission she claims to be uniquely qualified for as governor of an oil and gas-producing state. "We must get there," the GOP nominee said September 18 on Fox News. "It is a matter of national security and our future prosperity."

But earlier this year, Palin missed an opportunity to help the US mainland obtain billions of cubic feet of natural gas from Alaska's Cook Inlet. Her support of an effort by major energy producers to export the fuel to more lucrative markets in Asia came just as a facility that will provide the first practical way to bring the state's natural gas to the lower 48 states was set to open on the Baja coast in Mexico.

Cook Inlet's natural gas has been exported for years, and until this past spring, it pretty much had no alternative. Without a pipeline or even facility to receive natural gas on the West Coast, it had no way of reaching the lower 48 states. As a result, producers sent whatever wasn't used locally — 28% of total output last year — to a Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) plant on the Kenai Peninsula, where gas was chilled to a liquid state and put on tankers for Japan and other Pacific rim countries.

But since this past May, some of Alaska's gas could have wound up in domestic hands. San Diego-based Sempra Energy opened the first LNG terminal on the West Coast of North America. The Mexican facility, a $975 million project, is tied directly to the gas pipeline system that leads to California, Texas and Arizona.

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According to Senator Ron Wyden, the Alaskan gas slated for Asia between 2009 and 2011 could meet the annual consumption of 1.4 million American families. The Oregon Democrat has accused Palin of a "major contradiction" between her support for gas exports and campaign emphasis on more drilling to slake US energy needs. "It's pretty outrageous to scare Americans about energy shortages while she has been approving export of billions of cubic feet of natural gas that could be providing energy to homes in Alaska and the lower 48 states," he said.