Energy Department Export Approval Failed to Fully Assess Project’s Climate, Environmental Harms
Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:
Conservation groups sued the federal government today for approving exports from the Alaska LNG Project, which would transport gas from Alaska’s North Slope to Asia.
The lawsuit challenges the U.S. Department of Energy’s export approval for failing to fully assess the project’s climate and environmental harms. The Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity are asking the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to direct the department to reconsider its export approval after preparing a new environmental impact statement that fully considers the project’s environmental and climate harms.
The Alaska LNG Project would include an 807-mile pipeline bisecting Alaska from north to south to transport methane gas extracted from Alaska’s North Slope to a liquefaction plant and marine terminal near Nikiski on the Kenai Peninsula. The $38.7 billion fossil-fuel export project would export 20 million metric tons of gas per year, potentially releasing more than 50 million metric tons of carbon pollution annually from those exports. That’s in addition to at least 297 million metric tons of carbon pollution from operating the extensive project infrastructure over its 30-year lifespan.
The project would tap large methane gas deposits in America’s Arctic. Such deposits, lacking any route to market, have remained in the ground despite decades of North Slope oil development. The latest in a long line of failed projects to commercialize North Slope gas, Alaska LNG has been government funded since Exxon, ConocoPhillips and BP backed out in 2016, citing cost concerns. It has cost the state of Alaska hundreds of millions of dollars and still lacks investors, partners or customers.
While a small portion of the gas could potentially be tapped for in-state use, the plan calls for exporting most of the liquefied methane gas from a terminal in the Cook Inlet, home to endangered beluga whales. It would then be sent across the Pacific to Asian markets.
