White Papers
June 4, 2013
The biggest building on Earth is Boeing's wide-body assembly plant in Everett, Wash. It covers an area as large as 18 Manhattan city blocks, stands 11 stories tall, and encloses almost 500 million cubic feet of space.
Imagine you have six of those buildings, all filled with natural gas from Alaska's North Slope. Your assignment: Figure out how to shrink the gas enough so that all of the methane...
May 22, 2013
While liquefied natural gas purveyors across the world are giddy over the high prices paid in Asia, the region's buyers, including Japan, South Korea and China, are brainstorming ways to ratchet down the cost of the expensive, but necessary, fuel.
The central question is how to tame the forces that amped up Asia LNG prices past $18 per million Btu for some cargoes last year. One oft-discussed...
May 8, 2013
Billions of dollars are being committed to what could be the liquefied natural gas industry's next big trend: Producing LNG aboard giant vessels anchored in the ocean rather than piping the gas ashore for processing.
They're called floating LNG projects, or FLNG. Three of them are under design or construction — for offshore Australia, Indonesian waters and coastal Colombia.
The whole LNG...
May 6, 2013
The LNG business began in Africa. Almost 50 years ago, Algeria led the world into the age of liquefying natural gas, loading it aboard ships and delivering it to markets that could not be reached by pipeline. Algeria expanded its production in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by Nigeria in 1999, Egypt in 2005 and Equatorial Guinea in 2007.
Those four countries supplied almost 17 percent of the...
May 1, 2013
Bets are being placed that natural gas can make inroads as a fuel powering trucks, ships and trains, as well as the big workhorse engines of mines and oil fields.
This would be a significant new market for the liquefied natural gas industry, which has been defined for 50 years by big LNG plants sending product aboard big oceangoing tankers to major utilities in gas-starved countries around the...
April 16, 2013
To make sure they play fair, gas pipeline companies must wall off their staffers who run the line from those who market gas to buyers.
It might be a virtual wall. It might be a physical one. Whatever its form, the wall must be impenetrable, so there's no improper water-cooler talk between employees on one side of the wall and those on the other.
The federal rules that mandate this wall for...
April 3, 2013
The proposed Alaska natural gas pipeline and liquefaction plant would be one of the largest and costliest energy projects ever built anywhere. Settling on financing for the $45 billion to $65 billion endeavor would be an essential step in bringing gas from the North Slope to market.
The money would be used by partners ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips and TransCanada to design, engineer and build...
March 25, 2013
Asia's natural gas buyers have taken small steps forward in their bid to unhinge supplies from today's high oil prices.
They have signed a handful of definitive or preliminary agreements to buy liquefied natural gas at prices tied to the U.S. Henry Hub pipeline-gas benchmark. The oil-linked LNG prices they have been paying to suppliers elsewhere have hovered at up to five times above that U.S....
February 26, 2013
Traditionally, going back to the start of liquefied natural gas exports in the 1960s, LNG plants have been owned and operated by the same companies that owned the gas resources, be they multinational petroleum companies or state-owned national oil and gas producers.
But sometimes economic necessity pushes aside tradition.
U.S. LNG export projects plan to go with a different model, in which the...
February 20, 2013
Ideas for moving Prudhoe Bay's natural gas bounty off Alaska's North Slope are as plentiful as cottonwood seed in the June air.
Some are modest: Truck small amounts of gas to Fairbanks consumers.
Some are epic: Pipe massive amounts to a Southcentral Alaska liquefied natural gas plant from which LNG could be shipped to Asia – the most expensive North American private-sector construction project...
Gas Line Library
Access a searchable online collection of Alaska North Slope natural gas pipeline work going back 40 years.
Projects Guide & Maps
Federal export laws
Video on federal laws governing Alaska North Slope natural gas exports, prepared by the Institute of the North with assistance from the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Alaska gas pipelines.
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