Open season begins for AGIA line

According to a lengthy story from the Anchorage Daily News, today's the first day of TransCanada's initial open season. Just to make sure, an "open season" is a period of time, in this case 90 days, during which a pipeline company solicits supply commitments from producers to fill a proposed pipeline. The next 90 days will be really boring (or tense) for the public though; nearly all of the negotiations will be kept under wraps because of how much proprietary information will be involved. But companies aren't prohibited from disclosing their bids or even general terms, so there may be some hints as the process moves along. TransCanada is the licensee under the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA), and under that agreement, after the end of the first open season under that agreement, the company will be eligible for 90 percent reimbursement of pre-construction costs (up to $500 million), to be paid by the State of Alaska. Read much more, here. By the way, Alaska Beat was glad to be reminded by TransCanada's VP of Alaska development that the maximum design throughput is 5.9 billion cubic feet per day.