Dear Senator,

On behalf of our millions of members and supporters, we urge you to vote YES on Markey Amendment 2542 to H.R. 3684 substitute Amendment #2137, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, when it comes up for a vote in the Senate.

Markey Amendment 2542 strikes Sec. 40401(d) Loan Guarantees For Certain Alaska Natural Gas Transportation Projects and Systems, which would change the law to allow federal loan guarantees of approximately $25 billion dollars[1] to prop up the failing Alaska LNG Project, a $39 billion scheme to export North Slope natural gas to Asia and other foreign markets.

If built, the Alaska LNG Project would be one of the largest of its kind in the world.  It would require a gas treatment plant on the North Slope, an 807-mile pipeline cutting across the entire state of Alaska, a liquefaction facility in Southcentral Alaska, and two additional gas transmission lines that would collectively span 64 miles. The Alaska LNG Project would be a climate disaster.  Scientists have determined that all Arctic oil and gas must be treated as “unburnable” if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.[2]

Because there is no existing route to transport North Slope gas to the market, the vast majority of North Slope gas would stay in the ground were it not for this project.  Burning the 929 billion cubic feet of natural gas that the project is authorized to export annually would produce over 50 million metric tons of C02e (1.5 billion metric tons C02e over the 30-year life of the project).  The project would also directly release more than 16 million tons C02e per year during operation.  In total, annual emissions associated with this one project would equal approximately 1% of all C02e emissions produced in the United States in 2019.  The Department of Energy (DOE) recently decided to reconsider authorizing the Alaska LNG Project exports because of the President’s Executive Orders on climate change. DOE is now conducting a closer review of the project’s climate and environmental impacts.

Thanks to the massive infrastructure required to ship North Slope gas across Alaska and to market, the Alaska LNG Project would also have serious environmental consequences beyond climate impacts.  These include:

-          Permanently destroying over 8,000 acres of wetlands

-          Causing significant adverse impacts to permafrost, forests, and the Central Arctic Herd of caribou

-          Disproportionately harming subsistence activities and health in Alaska Native and environmental justice communities

-          Harming endangered and threatened polar bears, seals, and whales

-          Increasing regional haze and acid deposition in federally protected high-quality and sensitive airsheds such as parks and wilderness areas

-          Routing the pipeline through Denali National Park and Preserve

These unacceptable impacts to our climate, Alaska communities, and Alaska land and wildlife should not be federally subsidized.  

The Alaska LNG Project is a bad financial bet for the United States Government as well.  Though it was originally sponsored in 2012 by ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, BP, TransCanada, and the state of Alaska, the project’s increasingly dubious economics and ongoing failure to secure customers have left it in the sole ownership of the state’s Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, which is now actively seeking federal funding.[3]  This amendment aims to throw the project a taxpayer-financed lifeline by securing massive federal financial backing to export unburnable Arctic gas anywhere in the world. 

Again, we urge you to vote Yes on Markey Amendment 2542 and remove this harmful language from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

Sincerely,

Earthjustice

League of Conservation Voters

Sierra Club

[1] Adjusted from 2004 dollars.  See 15 U.S.C. § 720n(c)(2).

[2] C. McGlade and P. Ekins, The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2°C, 517 NATURE 187 (2015).

[3] E. Brehmer, Federal gasline funding pitch gets chilly reception in Senate Resources, Alaska Journal of Commerce (Mar. 24, 2021).