Companies seek extension for Alaska LNG facility
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Jan 19 (Reuters) - ConocoPhillips (COP.N) and Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO.N) applied for permission on Friday to keep shipping liquefied natural gas from a facility in Kenai, Alaska, for another two years through 2011.
The two companies applied for a 2-year extension to the U.S. Department of Energy to keep operating the only facility that exports LNG from North America. The current export license for the Kenai LNG facility expires in 2009.
The Kenai plant, which has operated since 1969, currently exports more than 1.3 million metric tons of LNG annually to Asian markets.
Extending the export license will strengthen the natural gas industry in the Cook Inlet basin, ensuring that existing fields have a place to sell their gas and stimulating more development in the aged, mature basin in southern Alaska, Marathon and ConocoPhillips officials said.
The companies' long-term plan is to keep operating the LNG plant well past 2011, as long as natural gas supplies can be secured, John Barnes, Alaska production manager for Marathon, said at an Anchorage oil-industry conference.
Possible opposition to the license extension could come from local utilities or governments that want to secure tightening Cook Inlet natural gas supplies for Alaska's most densely populated region.
"We're competing with this now. They want to export gas while we want gas to supply our customers," said Curtis Thayer, director of corporate and external affairs for Anchorage-based Enstar Natural Gas Co., a unit of SEMCO Energy Inc. SEN.N
