TransCanada Corp. says it has received commitments from North Slope natural gas producers to supply its Alaska natural gas pipelines project, but it will take months before the company knows whether the promised supply is enough to justify the mammoth project.
TransCanada is working with ExxonMobil Corp. to build a pipeline across Alaska, with one option to bring the gas by pipe to Alberta, and another to liquify it at Valdez and ship it to international markets.
The company conducted an "open season" call - in which producers commit volumes to underpin a proposed project - which closed late on Friday, said Tony Palmer, TransCanada's vice-president of Alaska development
The company has estimated the cost for a 2,737-kilometre pipeline to bring gas from Alaska's North Slope to Alberta at between $32-billion and $41-billion.
The second 1,278-kilometre option to Valdez, Alaska would cost between $20-billion to $26-billion, not including the price of building gas-liquefying facilities.
With the boom in shale gas production in North America, many analysts question whether gas pipelines from the Arctic are commercially viable.
Exxon's Canadian subsidiary, Imperial Oil Ltd., is the lead partner in a proposed pipeline from the Mackenzie Delta to bring Canadian Arctic gas south, but that project appears to be stalled.
Mr. Palmer said TransCanada remains optimistic that the Alaskan project will proceed, though no firm decision will be made until 2014 at the earliest. He denied recent reports that TransCanada and Exxon are negotiating with the owners of a competing proposal, the Denali pipeline, to merge the projects.