www.AlaskaAlliance.com 2024 Meet Alaska Conference & Trade Show 21 Alternative energy sources like the wind turbines on Fire Island in Cook Inlet (above) are a supplement but will likely never replace natural gas as the primary source for Railbelt electricity. Hilcorp remains the primary natural gas producer, from Cook Inlet, for Southcentral Alaska utilities (left). the commander at Joint Base Elmemdorf-Richardson to ask the military to conserve energy. Dunleavy also ordered thermostats to be turned down in state buildings. Matanuska Electric Association was on standby to fire up diesel-powered backup generators at the cooperative’s Eklutna power plant, which could have saved gas, but that step was not needed. There are now plans to create more backup gas “deliverability” at CINGSA with two more gas producing wells to be drilled, Sims told state legislators. Work will start this summer. This will increase the number of producer wells from five to seven. Enstar is the operator and part-owner of CINGSA. As cold weather continued through late January the situation became more dire. Daily meetings began between utility managers including Matanuska Electric Association and Hilcorp Energy. At one point so much gas had been withdrawn from storage at CINGSA that only 10 million cubic feet of deliverability was left. What was worrisome was more problems could develop with gas wells. When the first of the CINGSA wells developed problems the gas deliverability, or withdrawal rate, dropped about 150 million cubic feet per day to 121.5 million cubic feet per day, Sims said. That is a 19 percent drop that could be managed. But when problems hit the second well deliverability dropped to 105 million cubic feet per day, approximately a 30 percent decline. “At that point, all of us became very concerned,” Sims said. Enstar began checking the wells at CINGSA every 15 minutes. Hilcorp agreed to provide backup gas to Enstar above the gas company’s current contracted gas purchase volumes at no extra cost, Luke Saugier, Hilcorp’s senior vice president for Alaska, told legislators. “We felt this was the right thing to do,” Saugier said. There were other continencies in place. Golden Valley Electric Association, the Fairbanks-based electric cooperative for the Interior, was prepared to generate more power with its oil-fired plant at North Pole and send power south to Mat-Su over the electric intertie that connects the Interior with Southcentral Alaska. Again, this was a contingency that turned out not to be needed. Chugach Electric Association, the state’s largest power cooperative, was in a somewhat more secure position because it owns a part of the Beluga gas field on the west side of Cook Inlet and can supply 60 percent of its fuel needs for generation with its own gas, Arthur Miller, Chugach’s CEO, told legislators in the hearings. — Tim Bradner
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