VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 4 | FALL 2025
happens, she said. Once the Harvest fa- cility is done with its commissioning and steady operations begin, the IGU-Hilcorp contract in the Cook Inlet will terminate. “IGU will have, for a period of up to 12 months, access to (Cook Inlet) gas supply for Titan on an emergency basis, but not for baseload production,” Sudduth said. In the Fairbanks and North Pole ar- eas, IGU currently serves a little less than 3,500 customers. “This is up quite a bit from the 1,200 customers pre-2019 when we commis- sioned the 5.25-million-gallon LNG storage tank that allowed us to take on new customers,” Sudduth said. “With the combination of new supply, storage and
vaporization, and ability to extend main- lines as needed, we are ready to take on new customers.” This could include Fort Wainright, the major U.S. Army installation at Fair- banks. The Army post is now heated with steam heat generated by coal, but an En- vironmental Impact Statement (EIS) on future power supply done by the Army envisions a switch to natural gas. The Army has yet to issue a final Record of Decision on the EIS, however, so the mat- ter is on hold for now. The Interior Gas Utility is publicly owned and part of the Fairbanks North Star Borough. It operates more than 150 miles of mainline gas distribution in Fairbanks and 85 miles in North Pole. IGU’ service is supported by 5.5 million gallons of LNG storage at three storage sites in Fairbanks and North Pole, east of the Interior city. The public utility was formed fol- lowing the purchase of privately-owned Fairbanks Natural Gas, which had also developed the small LNG plant in the Mat-Su and began trucking liquefied gas from the Mat-Su to Fairbanks on the Parks Highway. Gas distribution lines were first built to serve a down- town core area of the Interior city. Ser- vice was limited to the availability of LNG supply and storage, and financing. The state Legislature stepped in to help finance construction of larger LNG storage tanks though state capital appropriations and the state develop- ment finance agency, the Alaska Indus- trial Development and Export Author- ity (AIDEA), helped finance IGU’s expansion and additional storage after the public utility was formed. The idea of an LNG plant on the North Slope with liquefied gas trucked to Fairbanks is not new. Ray Latchem, CEO of Tulsa, Okla.-based Spectrum LNG, had formed a small local gas dis- tribution system to serve contractors and support companies at Deadhorse, at Prudhoe Bay, and also proposed an LNG plant to serve Fairbanks. At the time, the project was not economically feasible as a private ven- ture with the limited customer base of the Fairbanks gas service area. It was only after the Legislature and AIDEA extended assistance, and Harvest Mid- stream agreed to build the LNG plant as
a separate, private venture, that the over- all project took shape. The LNG plant was not without its technical complexity. Natural gas for the Harvest plant is produced from the Prud- hoe Bay field and has a high 12% carbon dioxide content. Almost all of the CO2 must be removed for the gas to be con- verted to LNG, however, and this pre- sented challenges for Harvest. The diffi- culties were overcome, however. Now that the plant is operating, there are new opportunities. Although IGU has first call on the LNG from Harvest, there will eventually be liquefied gas available for other customers on the North Slope and in Interior Alaska. LNG trucked from Prudhoe Bay could solve the energy challenges of a major copper mine proposed in the Ambler Mining District, for example. AIDEA is proposing to build a 211-mile industrial road from the Dalton Highway west to the area where mining companies are ex- ploring copper discoveries. If the road is built, and a mine in the Ambler District is feasible, LNG from
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"Bringing North Slope natural gas into Fair- banks is a historic step for Interior Alaska but also for our state as a whole. This project gives our community access to a new, virtually un- limited source of gas, strengthening our resil- ience and ensuring our customers have access to reliable service as Alaska's energy landscape continues to evolve." — Elena Sudduth, General Manager, IGU
to market the extra LNG to anyone on firm basis,” Sudduth said. Currently, IGU's Titan plant near Port MacKenzie, in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, produces up to 50,000 gallons per day, one third of the planned capacity of the Harvest plant on the North Slope. “The Titan plant’s actual liquefaction capacity varies depending on the ambient temperature. The colder it is, the more efficient the LNG plant is. In mid-Octo- ber the plant was producing about 42,000 gallons of LNG,” Sudduth said. The transition from the Mat-Su to the North Slope will be rather abrupt when it
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newly available to provide energy for new economic development, such as mines, in Interior Alaska. On a closer timeframe, contractors on the North Slope would be able to substi- tute liquefied gas for diesel in providing fuel for new oil and gas projects.
Prudhoe Bay could be trucked to the road juncture, which is about half-way to Fairbanks on the Dalton, and then west to Ambler. The total trucking distance from Prudhoe to Ambler would be about the same as the distance from Prudhoe to Fairbanks. This illustrates the potential for LNG
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ALASKA RESOURCE REVIEW FALL 2025
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