Sarah Palin's Alaskan Gas Pipeline Project Likely Scrapped

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On June 26, 2010 Sarah Palin was speaking at The Oil Palace in Tyler, Texas about energy independance. It was the same old Sarah Palin from the 2008 campaign trail. She started by saying how she has been spending alot of time in Texas lately and of course because Texas is a great, beautiful, patriotic State.

During the rest of the 5 minute speech, Palin said a whole lot about nothing in that random order that has become here trademark. The crowd applauded enthusiastically from time to time and as usual, it was never for anything of political substance or for an original thought of her own, but rather for one of her predictable jabs about what Obama doesn't seem to understand.

I was surprised that Palin would even want to speak publically about energy with her $40 billion pipline up in Alaska currently being uncovered as a shady deal that is most likely going to leave tax-payers on the hook for 500 million. If you recall during the 2008 campaign, Palin claimed,

“I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history. And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.”

The problem with her saying "we began a nearly fourty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence" is because the contract to build the pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48 States is just a concept that exist on paper only. There was no pipeline then, there is no pipline now, and it is now likely that there never will be a pipeline, at least not a pipline that Sarah Palin will have anything to do with.

On August 27, 2008, Palin signed The Alaska Gasline Inducement Act into law, which awarded a Canadian energy company a license and $500 million dollars as an incentave to "someday" build and operate the pipeline. It was supposed to carry natural gas from the North Slope, but since the contract doesn't explain how the gas was supposed to get to the lower 48, the gas would have to been sold to Canada or shipped off to China. So Palin's claim that this pipline was going to help bring America closer to energy independence was also a bunch of hooey.

Palin said it again during the the vice-presidential debate

"we’re building a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline — which is North America’s largest and most expensive infrastructure project ever — to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets.”

Maybe Palin doesn't know that (we're) buliding a pipeline means the same as (we are) building a pipeline. With every twist and turn into an AP investigation comes more revolations of Sarah Palin's questionable ethics. Particularly in the bidding process that eventually went to a company that Palin had connections with.

Palin claimed there was a "smart and fair bidding process" - but the AP found that her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited the winner, TransCanada Corp.

Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada. The leader of Palin's pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. That woman's former business partner at the lobbying firm was TransCanada's lead private lobbyist on the pipeline deal, interacting with legislators in the weeks before the vote to grant TransCanada the contract.

Additionally, a former TransCanada executive served as an outside consultant to Palin's pipeline team. Under a different set of rules four years earlier, TransCanada had offered to build the pipeline without a state subsidy; under Palin, the company could receive a maximum $500 million.

Contrary to Palin's campaign promises to "build a pipeline quickly," the massive project to send natural gas south is still no sure thing. In fact, according to the Jeneau Empire, the bill was so poorly conceived that the state was urged to cut it losses at the time by former state petroleum economist Roger Marks, who said,

“State leaders made faulty assessments in their quest to land the long-sought pipeline project.”

I wonder why Glenn Beck isn't offering up one of his "Oh Gee That's Funny" comments in his Kermet The Frog voice about these very suspicious set of circumstances? - If the pipeline was all that she painted it out to be, perhaps Palin should have stuck around the Governors office long enough to see the project through.