US seeks litigation pause until late 2025 while it redoes Alaska LNG studies

The federal government is urging an appeals court to put on hold through 2025 the lawsuit challenging its biological evaluations for the long-running Alaska LNG project. The pause is needed because the US Fish and Wildlife Service and US National Marine Fisheries Service plan to complete new biological evaluations for the export project by the end of 2025, the government told the court Oct. 3.

The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club in May petitioned the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit over the 2020 biological opinions that evaluated impacts to several threatened and endangered species from the $44 billion, 20 million metric tons per year project.

In a motion Oct. 3, the federal government argued that putting the case on hold until late 2025 would not harm the project (Center for Biological Diversity, et al. v. Department of Interior, et al., 24-3397).

“The company does not plan to begin construction on the first phase of the Project until 2026,” the government argued. “And if Alaska Gasline wants to move forward with the project, it will need the Services to complete the reinitiated consultations.”

FWS sees need for new opinion

According to the government’s filing, the FWS has concluded that restarting consultation on the species is needed along with a new biological opinion, because of other recent 9th Circuit case law.

The federal entities also noted the project will need to renew several expiring approvals because its Prudhoe Bay authorization under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and its Cook Inlet authorization expire in 2025. The FWS consultation will support the new authorizations needed to build the project, the government told the court.

“[I]t makes little sense for the parties and the court to proceed now—in an expedited fashion or otherwise—with a challenge to biological opinions that may be materially modified at the conclusion of the services’ consultations,” the government said.

In a prior filing, Alaska Gasline Development Corp. indicated that it would oppose a stay in the case, highlighting the fact that the project began the early stages of the environmental review as far back as 2014 and that it "has spent substantial time, resources and capital for over a decade working with numerous federal and state agencies.” The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission authorization was issued in 2020.

Environmental groups do not oppose the stay, according to the federal government’s filing.

The overall project entails a gas treatment plant in Alaska’s North Slope, pipelines connecting production to the plant, an 806-mile pipeline from the plant to the export facility, and the LNG export terminal on the Kenai Peninsula.

More recently, AGDC has shifted its focus to prioritize building the 42-inch-diameter pipeline from the North Slope toward Southcentral Alaska, as a way of de-risking the broader LNG project. The estimated $10.8 billion pipeline would also serve Southcentral and and Interior Alaska markets

The federal government cited a Wood Mackenzie draft economic analysis regarding the first phase as the source for its statement that construction would start in 2026.

AGDC spokesperson Tim Fitzpatrick said in an Oct. 4 email that initiating construction is dependent upon completing the front-end engineering and design, which is expected to be a 12- to 18-month process. "At present we are working to secure the investment needed to initiate FEED," Fitzpatrick said.

As for the request to stay the court proceeding, Fitzpatrick said the project already was approved by two successive federal administrations, "following the most intensive environmental review of any US energy infrastructure project in history."

In the litigation, environmental groups plan to argue that FWS and NMFS, in their 2020 biological evaluations, failed to fully examine and mitigate the project’s harms to polar bears, Cook Inlet beluga whales and North Pacific right whales.

Environmental groups are also challenging the US Department of Energy’s export authorization for Alaska LNG in a separate case; oral argument is schedule for Oct. 21 (Center for Biological Diversity v. US DOE, 23-1214).