TransCanada chief to retire, successor named

The news that Hal Kvisle, the CEO of the AGIA licensee's parent company, TransCanada, will retire in June has been around a couple of days, but Alaska Beat has been holding back until there was more to relate. If you'll recall, when the AGIA license was made official at a public ceremony in 2008, Kvisle said, "On behalf of TransCanada, I look forward to working closely with the state of Alaska, the administration, its people, the Natives of Alaska, and potential customers for shipping on this pipeline. We think it will be a dream of a project." According to the Calgary Herald, Kvisle has been grooming his successor, Russ Girling, for some time now, but he was sticking around to make sure some major projects got off to a good start. No, not the Alaska gas pipeline. He was mainly concerned with the Keystone bitumen pipelines and a power production project. Read more from the Herald, here. Read more about Kvisle's announcement, his actions as head of TransCanada, and his plans for the future from Canada's Globe and Mail, here. And, sorry to save for last what might be the biggest bummer to Alaskans, but Reuters (via the Calgary Herald) reports that Alaska's natural gas pipeline doesn't appear on the list of top priorities for TransCanada's new chief. Girling said in an interview that the Alaska project will be important for TransCanada in a decade, but for now, he's more concerned with "major investments that will come to fruition over the next eight years." Read more, here.