Obama undermining or usurping AGIA pipeline?

A recent article from the Juneau Empire regarding the final steps toward Larry Persily's confirmation as head of the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Alaska Natural Gas Transportation Projects and rumors that the president plans to elevate the position's profile are causing consternation among some Sarah Palin fans. A post on Conservatives4Palin says the news means that the president will try to take credit for the pipeline that the Palin-era Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) intends to create. Read more of that, here (but if you want facts and opinions about AGIA and other Alaska natural gas projects more current than the ones C4P links to, start with the following Alaska Dispatch site-search: results). Furthermore, another blog, US4Palin, worries that Persily and President Obama are instead going to kill the AGIA pipeline to discredit Palin's claims of competence. Read more of that, here, and don't forget that despite Persily's past remarks about former Gov. Palin, Alaskans on both sides of the aisle respect his candor when it comes to matters of policy.

Really though, it would be awesome if the federal coordinator's only concern were the AGIA line, as both sources above seem to assume, but the office is actually tasked with coordinating an Alaska gas line without a preference for any of the projects currently afloat. It would also be neat if the AGIA line's success -- or any large-diameter, Arctic gas pipeline's for that matter -- were predicated on simple politics, but it's not. AGIA will fail or succeed based primarily on market forces and producers' willingness to supply gas to the line. Period. President Obama has less to do with an Arctic gas line being built than do many trillions of cubic feet of North American shale gas near markets and established transportation infrastructure, to say nothing of depressed gas commodity prices that appear increasingly decoupled from oil commodity prices. To insinuate that political forces are stronger than market forces when discussing a complex, $41 billion petroleum project is irresponsible ... or come to think of it ... really, really wise. If the two blame narratives above take hold (judging from a verbatim re-post on The Cypress Times, one of them -- the version where AGIA fails -- may be starting to catch on), there won't be a downside for Palin no matter what happens to the AGIA project.