Good grief – here we go again … follow the money – how much is the State paying for this, including the Golly gee – you can smell in the air and it stinks of high heaven ( never understood that saying since I’ve never smelled high heaven )
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I have heard the expression as “stinks TO high heaven”, meaning stinks so bad, you can smell it from god’s house.
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GINO: Pull my finger.

When Governor Sarah Palin was elected in 2006, we believed she would put Alaska first. But once elected, she put Sarah first.

Because of her national ambitions, she is promoting an agenda that will allow Outside corporations to dominate Alaska’s resources, including our energy and the jobs it provides.

Over my objection, the Governor negotiated a contract last year with TransCanada under AGIA, supported by the legislature, that will now provide ExxonMobil Corporation with half of $500 million of state funds.

I have urged the Governor many times to lead our state in another direction. We should build and own a natural gas pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez and ship Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to world markets.

http://community.adn.com/adn/node/141753

What do you know? Wally Hickel agrees with me.

Keep this in mind: Palin’s lies about “hungry markets” are utter rubbish. The Lower 48 is wallowing in a surfeit of natural gas – with no market at all for it. Mrs Palin is merely trying to make a name for herself. She is going to look a fool and a liar once more, because nobody wants Alaska’s natural gas. But I guess she figures she’ll have gone on to bigger and better things by the time her useless pipeline is rusting over.

The stupid woman would be a damned sight better off switching all of Alaska from oil to natural gas – processed at home, creating a new industry – and forgetting the white elephant pipeline. But she can’t tour nationwide on the back of that.

How much money do you suppose she is giving Exxon to help her out of her embarrassment?

She needed some credibility in regard to this pipeline, so it is more likely that she made concessions (taxes, ownership, etc) to bring them on board to make it appear as though it was/is moving forward.

The bigger issue: this project is NOT financially feasible at this point, that was pointed out on numerous occasions recently, the situation remains the same. Natural gas supplies in the lower 48 (infrastructure already in place) are being developed and are able to supply the nation’s needs.

All of this will come out, it will become obvious, it will be exposed, but the problem is that it needs to come out & be pointed out by reputable news organizations & oil/gas experts (and no, the gov is NOT one of those) before she can attempt to use this to buy herself another term as gov of AK. I believe that she knows that she has no future in national politics without another term as gov of this state (maybe even with another term), so she is likely bolstering her appeal via continuing to bill herself as the natural gas pipeline messiah. That works for a lot of Alaskans who have dreams about high-paying oil jobs, even the temporary ones that come with the building process, though there would be long-term jobs associated with the pipeline as well.

But I don’t think it’s going to happen. If it does it will not happen thru any efforts of the gov, it will happen in spite of her efforts (which are short-sighted & not in Alaska’s short- or long-term best interests). As soon as she is out of the picture as gov of Alaska look for Exxon, BP & COP to broker a deal that will be extremely lucrative for all of them, and likely AGIA will be jettisoned and TransCanada paid off.

Let’s face it, there is NOTHING that she has done for this state that has been in its best interests. And before anyone shouts out that she has twisted arms to get the oil companies to pay more taxes — HA HA HA, that only works when oil in indecently high, right now we are getting LESS than we were before her arm twisting.

http://www.transcanada.com/Alaska/pdf/Alaska_Zoom3pages.pdf