Sep. 27--The soonest an Alaska natural gas pipeline can deliver significant amounts of new gas supplies to the North American market is 2016, and that's assuming North Slope producers reach agreements with Alaska and Canadian governments soon, a senior Federal Energy Regulatory Commission official told an Arctic energy conference in Anchorage Sept. 20.

Robert Cupina, deputy director of FERC's Office of Energy Projects, also told the conference than it would take about the same amount of time to go through the regulatory steps, financing and planning for a liquefied natural gas project, viewed by some as an alternative to an all-land pipeline from Alaska to the Lower 48 states.

The main proponent of an LNG project, the Alaska Gasline Port Authority, has said it can complete its project earlier than the all- land pipeline, but Cupina said that's not the case.

Of the all-land pipeline projects proposed by North Slope producers and TransCanada Corp., Cupina said an aggressive schedule for the project could see an open season for gas shipment nominations in March 2006. Design and engineering would follow with an application filed with FERC in December 2007.

An open season is a procedure in which developers of a pipeline call for proposals to ship gas so they can sign contracts and design the pipeline to transport the amount of gas contracted.

The schedule laid out by Cupina would see FERC approving the project in August 2009, followed by two to three years for financing and fabrication of equipment. Construction would start in August 2012. Three years will be needed to build the project.

That means the earliest in-service date would be 2015, with the pipeline reaching its planned 4.5 billion cubic feet per day throughput rate by 2016, Cupina said.

It would take about the same amount of time to gain FERC approval and build an alternative plan for a pipeline across Alaska and an LNG plant at Valdez, Cupina told the conference.