Reports on Alaska’s major gas project open to public comment

 The public now has access to new reports detailing the work involved in creating Alaska’s proposed liquefied natural gas project.

Project managers submitted the resource reports to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last month. The reports are a second draft and come after three years of geotechnical and geophysical work as well as public meetings and feedback.

They provide a wide range of information from a general overview of the project to where potential workers’ children would attend school, The Peninsula Clarion reported.

Federal regulators must review the documents and the public has to weigh in before the reports can be submitted in a final application. Then the project could move forward with the environmental impact assessment process.

Impacts from the state’s project with partners BP, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp will be felt throughout Alaska, according to one of the reports.

“Given the scale of the Project and its potential importance to the Alaska economy, the direct socioeconomic effects of the Project would also be experienced throughout the state,” the report states. “These statewide effects would include employment, fiscal and energy supply effects.”

Other reports outline the project’s impacts on natural resources such as fish, wildlife, vegetation, and air and water quality.

The resource reports are available to the public through the federal commission’s online library and the website for the liquefied natural gas project.

“This is your chance to be heard. I will tell you that when we started this project, we looked at comments on past gas line projects,” said Philip Brinkmann, licensing manager for the project. “There’s been 40 years of plans to build this gas line, and it’s a hard gas line to build.”

https://juneauempire.com/state/2016-08-19/reports-alaskas-major-gas-project-open-public-comment