June 2, 2024 — Environmental groups sued the federal government on Thursday for concluding that an 807-mile pipeline project across Alaska would not harm imperiled polar bears and Arctic whale species.
The Ninth Circuit complaint filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club challenges two biological opinions by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service for a new liquified natural gas project called the Alaska LNG Project.
“The project is a massive, massive fossil fuel project in Alaska that will wreak havoc on everything from polar bears to Cook Inlet beluga whales, and our planet,” Kristen Monsell, an attorney for the center, said in an interview.
The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation’s $38.7 billion project will extend an 807-mile pipeline from a gas treatment plant on the North Slope down to a liquefaction facility in Nikiski within the state’s southern Kenai Peninsula. By doing so, the company expects to produce an average of 3.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day and with the majority of gas going to international markets.
The environmental groups claim that burning this amount of gas could result in over 50 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions per year — a number they compare to building 13 coal-fired power plants.