Gasline politics and Election 2010

An interesting Alaska-centric point came out of today's TransCanada news as the company filed its open season plans on a natural gas pipeline.

While the line and the state's commitment to it under the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act is already expected to play a significant role in this year's election, Alaskans almost certainly won't know the results of an open season until after the voting booths close down.

Alaskans want gas, both to power their lights and heat their homes, and to replenish some of the losses to the state treasury as oil flow declines. Lots of folks are adamant supporters of one line or another, but at the end, they just want gas.

State officials have long pointed to an open season as that point where Alaskans will find out if AGIA is working. If it is, a commercial project will attract bids from producers. If it isn't, the companies won't come to the table.

Here's the intriguing part.

If an open season is entirely successful and only non-conditional bids are made, precedent agreements - the next step- - could be hammered out within days. And by federal rules, those agreements have to be made public within 10 days of finalizing.

Yet we're expecting conditional bids, and TransCanada vice-president of Alaska operations Tony Palmer says precedent agreements probably won't be signed off on until the end of 2010.

That carries us past the November election.

The timeline is coincidental - it isn't an intentional attempt to take AGIA out of the election debate.

Palmer explained that under TransCanada's original proposal, an open season would have concluded September 2009. But the Legislature took awhile approving the license - and $500 million in state money - and TransCanada didn't get its formal go-ahead until months after it expected to when the company made it known those agreements would probably take 100 days past the close of an open season.