Report 

Submitted to the 

United States Congress 

by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 

 

Twelfth Report to Congress on Progress Made in Licensing 

and Constructing the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline 

 

August 2011 
Twelfth Report to Congress on the Alaska Pipeline 

I. Executive Summary 

This report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission or 

FERC) is submitted pursuant to section 1810 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 

2005).1

 Section 1810 of EPAct 2005 requires that the Commission submit to Congress 

semi-annual reports describing the progress made in licensing and constructing an Alaska 

natural gas pipeline and any impediments thereto. 

 

This report provides an update from the Commission’s Eleventh Report, submitted 

on February 24, 2011. During the period covered by this report: 1) Denali – The Alaska 

Gas Pipeline LLC (Denali) notified the Commission on May 17, 2011, that it was 

terminating its project and withdrawing from the Commission’s pre-filing process; and, 

2) TransCanada Alaska Company, LLC (TC Alaska) continued to advance its project 

through engineering design, field data gathering, and stakeholder outreach with a target 

date for filing an application with the Commission for a Certificate of Public 

Convenience and Necessity in October 2012. Additionally, TC Alaska continued 

commercial discussions with potential shippers, but did not announce the execution of 

any precedent agreements. 

II. Status Report 

 A. The Commission’s Activities 

The Commission continues to execute its National Environmental Policy Act 

(NEPA) and Natural Gas Act certificate application responsibilities for the TC Alaska 

proposal. The Commission staff continues to work under its pre-filing process, preparing 

to initiate an environmental impact statement (EIS) once the project sponsor submits a 

complete application to the Commission containing all of the information that the 

Commission and other agencies would need to evaluate the proposed project. 

An ongoing topic of discussions with TC Alaska since it entered pre-filing has 

been the clarification of the data needs of Commission staff and those of the extensive 

team of agencies tasked with evaluating and ultimately granting the various permits and 

authorizations for construction and operation of the project. Through these discussions, 

TC Alaska and the Commission staff have sought to identify resource data gaps that must 

be filled prior to the filing of TC Alaska’s FERC application. One such gap is the data 

 1

 P.L. 109-58, 119 Stat. 594 (2005), 42 U.S.C § 15801 et seq. 
necessary to support an evaluation of the project’s potential impact on subsistence and 

subsistence users. 

As the Commission stated in its Tenth Report to Congress, delaying initiation of 

studies that require more than one year of data gathering and analysis (such as updating 

the subsistence databases), could also delay the filing of a complete application with the 

Commission. TC Alaska has a commitment under the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act 

(AGIA) to file an application with the Commission in October 2012. The Commission 

staff has informed TC Alaska that the risk of delay has increased because it did not begin 

subsistence surveys during the 2010-2011 winter season, as recommended. TC Alaska 

has recently indicated that it would begin the surveys in the 2011-2012 winter season and 

is developing a strategy to acquire the necessary information in the time available. 

In March 2011, the Commission staff and representatives of other federal and 

Alaska state agencies attended technical workshops in Anchorage that TC Alaska 

sponsored to familiarize agencies with its proposed natural gas pipeline construction 

practices. Workshop topics included general pipeline construction, right-of-way 

preparation and maintenance, and waterbody crossing practices. 

From March to June 2011, the Commission’s staff participated in 24 public Open 

House meetings that TC Alaska held throughout the project area. At these meetings the 

Commission’s staff provided information to community leaders, concerned citizens and 

potentially affected parties about the Commission’s role in the authorization of an Alaska 

natural gas pipeline project and the required environmental review process. The 

Commission’s staff also used these meetings as an opportunity to meet with Alaska 

Native community leaders and solicit initial concerns regarding TC Alaska’s proposal, 

also known as the Alaska Pipeline Project (APP). 

In June 2011, the Commission staff sent an informational letter to all the federallyrecognized tribes in Alaska seeking their assistance in identifying those tribes that could 

be directly affected by the APP. This letter asked each tribe to indicate whether they 

believed the APP would affect their tribe or village and if they would like to formally 

participate in government-to-government consultation. 

In August 2011, the Commission opened the NEPA scoping process by issuing a 

Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement and Request for 

Comments on Environmental Issues (NOI). This notice was mailed to potentially 

affected landowners; federal, state, and local government agencies; elected officials; 

environmental and public interest groups; Alaska Native tribes; local libraries and 

newspapers; and other interested parties. The NOI summarizes TC Alaska’s proposal 

and the issues of concern already identified by the Commission’s staff, identifies a public 

comment period, provides instructions on how to submit comments, and outlines the 

environmental review process. 

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B. Denali’s Proposal 

On May 17, 2011, Denali withdrew from the Commission’s pre-filing process in 

Docket No. PF08-26, stating that it has ended its open season process because it had not 

received the customer support needed to continue advancing the project. Denali further 

stated that it has ended its contract with Argonne National Laboratory, which is assisting 

FERC staff in preparation of an EIS for the project. 

C. TC Alaska’s Proposal 

The APP, as contemplated by TC Alaska, consists of a gas treatment plant (GTP) 

near Prudhoe Bay, about 58 miles of 32-inch-diameter pipeline from the processing plant 

at the Point Thomson Field to the GTP, and about 745 miles of 48-inch-diameter 

mainline pipeline from the GTP to the Alaska-Yukon border. All items related to TC 

Alaska’s project are available to the public in FERC’s eLibrary under TC Alaska’s prefiling docket (Docket No. PF09-11-000). 

TC Alaska is moving forward with engineering design, environmental studies, and 

other work while continuing commercial discussions to negotiate terms and conditions of 

the bids obtained during the open season for its pipeline capacity. In April 2011, the 

company filed its Preliminary Draft Resource Report numbers 1 and 10 with the 

Commission. These draft resource reports provide the general project description and a 

summary of the alternatives considered to date during the project’s design. In their final 

form, these will be part of a series of reports that constitute the environmental component 

of an application to the FERC. 

 TC Alaska continued meeting with affected communities, governments, Alaska 

Native tribes and corporations, local businesses, and other stakeholders to satisfy the 

requirements of its Stakeholder Engagement Plan. As described above, TC Alaska 

conducted a series of public Open House meetings in the project area between March and 

June 2011. These meetings provided an opportunity for the company to share 

preliminary project information with stakeholders and to identify the communities’ 

concerns. 

While the company continues analysis of the data collected in the 2010 field 

programs, TC Alaska’s summer 2011 field data gathering program is underway, with 

physical, biological, and cultural resource crews working through the summer. TC 

Alaska also has mobilized crews for its summer 2011 engineering field program. This 

program includes geologic fault delineation, compressor station site reconnaissance, and 

the refinement of pipeline routing. Technology development programs, including frost 

heave and uplift resistance testing and tensile and strain capacity modeling, are 

continuing as well. TC Alaska is working with the Department of Transportation’s 

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Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to develop the pipeline design 

information necessary to meet its regulatory filing requirements. 

 

III. Related Activities 

A. Operations of the Federal Coordinator 

The Office of the Federal Coordinator for Alaska Natural Gas Transportation 

Projects (OFC) continues to coordinate the actions of federal agencies regarding Alaska 

natural gas transportation projects and to provide a liaison function to ensure 

communication with Congress, the State of Alaska, and federal U.S. and Canadian 

agencies. 

In August 2011, the OFC published its second semi-annual Attention Items 

Update. This report discusses permitting priorities and identifies issues considered 

critical-path due to timeline constraints. According to the update, the following issues 

represent challenges to overcome before TC Alaska can file a complete application with 

the FERC in October 2012: sharing data collection and field season plans with federal 

agencies, developing a plan for the timing of permit applications and issuance, resolving 

the pipeline routing and land access issues through the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge, 

and conducting community subsistence surveys. The update states that timely resolution 

of these issues would allow the project to stay on schedule for the environmental impact 

statement and permitting. The OFC continues to monitor these issues and assist in 

coordination efforts as appropriate between TC Alaska and federal regulatory agencies.

B. Developments in Canada 

TransCanada Corporation and Exxon Mobil are continuing the commercial 

process, field studies, and public engagement necessary to develop the Canadian segment 

of the APP. Concurrently, Canada’s Northern Pipeline Agency (NPA), pursuant to the 

Northern Pipeline Act, continues to coordinate the actions of other Canadian federal 

agencies and to engage with the governments of British Columbia and Yukon. The NPA 

has initiated the process, including consultations with nine Yukon First Nations, to extend 

the term of the Foothills pipeline right of way easement agreement beyond the current 

expiration date of September 20, 2012. 

IV. Conclusion 

Progress has occurred on the TC Alaska project since the last report. Both the 

Commission staff and the OFC are actively engaged with TC Alaska and the permitting 

agencies to assist in the successful development of an Alaska pipeline project. However, 

each has identified issues that TC Alaska must work diligently to resolve in order to file a 

complete application with the Commission in October 2012.