Back on February  4,  the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, the Anchorage Daily News, and the Juneau Empire published an article filed by the Associated Press in Alaska which addressed the question of whether  the prospective North Slope gas producers  may own the North Slope gas pipeline they propose to build through Alaska and Canada without violating anti-trust law, an important question to be sure.

     The article said, among other things, that both state and federal officials would undertake studies to answer that question, demonstrating once again the bureaucratic obsession for reinventing the wheel, as well as underscoring the short memories and attention spans Alaska's government leaders and news media have. That question was answered more than 30 years ago. The answer is a resounding NO.

     In order for the North Slope producers now proposing to build the gas pipeline to avoid anti-trust constraints, the U.S. Congress would have to enact a law expressly exempting it from federal anti-trust law, just as it did in 1974, when it enacted the Trans Alaska (Oil) Pipeline Authorization Act, the first Congressional act ever passed authorizing the construction of a  privately-owned pipeline designed to carry hydrocarbons.

    That act exempted the oil pipeline - financed, built, operated and owned by the North Slope oil producers - from anti-trust sanctions. The same will have to be done for the gas pipeline if they are to own it.

     That won't be as simple this time around as it was in 1974 because of the perceived but mythical "energy crisis" thirty years ago which gave the oil pipeline irresistible political momentum. Now there is considerable opposition to granting further subsidies and incentives to the proposed North Slope gas pipeline in the absence of a real national natural gas shortage.

     Gas prices in the U.S. have reached an all-time high, not because of a shortage of gas, but because natural gas producers, transporters and distributors in the lower 48 states who command massive volumes of shut-in natural gas capacity  are relentlessly gouging consumers who at the same time are being asked to finance a significant part of the North Slope gas pipeline's projected cost whether or not the proposed North Slope gas pipeline is ever built or completed. I discuss this issue extensively with respect to the proposed gas pipeline in my recently-published book "Alaska Agonistes: The Age of Petroleum - How Big Oil Bought Alaska."

     In brief letters I recently submitted to editors of the News-Miner, the Daily News and the Empire, I pointed out these facts of economic life extant in a world class oil patch like Alaska, but only the News-Miner has published it.

      The  Empire's article also quoted State Rep. Beth Kerttula, D-Juneau, as saying that "The gas line should be open for access by more than just the major producers to ensure that the big three companies don't exert a monopoly hold on North Slope gas." This is disingenuous.

     In fact, existing law which already requires the owners of pipelines in Alaska to carry gas and oil produced by others has been in effect for more than 30 years. It's known as a common carrier law. Whether or not the proposed North Slope gas pipeline is exempt from anti-trust constraints, it will still be a monopoly which, in and of itself, is not illegal, nor necessarily wrong. The only issue is whether it will be a properly regulated monopoly. And there's the rub.

     When what I and other critics have called the special "Sell-out Session" of  the legislature back in 1973 caved in to Big Oil's demands effectively to repeal the original and more compelling Trans Alaska Pipeline Rights-of-Way Leasing Act enacted by its predecessor, the 1972 legislative session, it waived the state's right to regulate the rates which the pipeline owners could charge other competing owners of  North Slope oil to ship their oil through the pipeline in Alaska.

     As a result, the pipeline owners have been able to charge extortionate rates or tariffs, which give it a huge advantage over competing North Slope oil producers. Although in that particular respect, it's become a moot point because in the long interim since then the three major pipeline owners - BP, Exxon Mobile and Conoco Phillips - have managed to squeeze out most other smaller North Slope producers and consolidate their strangle-hold on North Slope hydrocarbons.They have been able to do this through anti-competitive measures generously provided by both the state and federal governments which have strengthened the producers' control over obscenely excessive North Slope oil prices and profits.

     These anti-competitive rates also have the immeasurable but significant effect of discouraging some other oil companies from investing in North Slope oil exploration and development, further cementing Big Oil's singular control over prices. And they significantly reduce the state and federal government's take from North Slope oil production by reducing the market value of Alaska oil upon which it is predicated.

     A couple weeks later, on Feb. 25, both the Anchorage Daily News and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner published another AP story which reported, among other things, that: "The three major oil producers and TransCanada Inc. are negotiating with the state for fiscal terms to build a gas pipeline from the North Slope, through Canada and to Chicago."

     This was wildly erroneous. The portions of the gas pipeline proposed to carry North Slope  natural gas from western Canada to  the U.S. West Coast, Chicago and other points east were completed in 1981 and 82, and  have been carrying surplus Canadian gas to U.S. consumers ever since.

     The negotiations mentioned in the article  pertain only to the Alaska and Yukon sections of the pipeline project, still to be built, known as Phase Two. I also discuss this issue at length in my book.

     The completed "Phase One," also known as the "pre-build" section of the Alaska Natural Gas Transportation System (ANGTS), encompasses about 1,500 miles of pipeline built at a cost of about $1 1/2 billion. Canadian gas began flowing through the western leg to the West Coast by late 1981, and through the eastern pre-build to Chicago and beyond by August, 1982.

     Their respective costs were $163 million in Canada and $1 billion in the U.S., covering 1,512 miles - 983 in the U..S. and 529 in Canada. The U.S. pre-build is the longest pipeline built in a continuum in U.S. history by a private owner, and  second in expense only to the Trans Alaska Oil Pipeline completed in 1977 . By contrast, Phase One, the Alaska-Yukon section, is currently estimated to cost $20 billion, but will almost certainly escalate in quantum amounts, if and when it is built. While I sent the editors of both newspapers letters correcting the erroneous AP story they carried, neither has published it.

Joe LaRocca has worked as an investigative journalist for more than 40 years, 20 of them in Alaska, from 1967 to 1986, covering the state legislature in Juneau for more than two decades. Now retired, he still works as a free lance writer and author from his native home in northwestern Pennsylvania. His recently-published book, "Alaska Agonistes: The Age of Petroleum - how Big oil Bought Alaska,"  an anecdotal political history of the modern oil industry in Alaska, is based on his work here.