The lone natural gas utility serving the Fairbanks area is aiming to have the project in place before its existing supply contract in Cook Inlet expires on May 31, 2013.
Fairbanks Natural Gas' sister company, Polar LNG, is beginning work this summer on a plant to liquefy North Slope gas to be trucked to Fairbanks.
In a letter to the RCA, Fairbanks Natural Gas said that work on the foundation for the plant began this summer at a pad the company previously leased, and that construction is scheduled for summer 2013. Polar LNG also plans to build a 3.8-mile pipeline from Flow Station 1, where natural gas and water are separated from crude oil, to the plant. The company expects to apply for a right-of-way lease in the near future, start construction this winter and complete the work next winter.
Fairbanks Natural Gas signed a 10-year supply contract with Exxon Mobil several years ago that would begin as soon as some system is ready to accept deliveries.
Fairbanks Natural Gas also told the RCA that a previously proposed sale of the company to the Alaska Gasline Port Authority, a public agency, "is not progressing toward closing."
The state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corp. recently released a report proposing a route and estimating cost information for a gas pipeline from the North Slope to Anchorage. That report estimated that consumers in Fairbanks could end up paying less than half what they pay now for the natural gas that Fairbanks Natural Gas trucks up from Southcentral.
"We don't think it impacts what we're working on right now" because the state project is still theoretical, Fairbanks Natural Gas president Dan Britton said last week.
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