US contractor CB&I is to carry out a six-month detailed design phase on a small LNG plant on the Alaskan North Slope to be supplied by BP. The facility would send the equivalent of at least 9 billion cubic feet of gas per annum by truck to Fairbanks, about 800 kilometres away. Fairbanks’ power distributing co-operative Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA) has entered into a 20-year natural gas supply contract with BP Exploration Alaska for up to 23 Bcfa starting in 2015. The gas would be used for power generation. Opening at 9 Bcfa, GVEA calculates it would truck in 310,000 gallons of LNG per day, including 10,000 gallons of propane per day, which is burned in rural villages. Besides the North Slope liquefaction facility, CB&I is also charged with designing the 800-metre gas supply pipeline from BP’s production source, a pre-treatment unit for removing carbon dioxide and water, a 2.4 million gallons LNG storage tank and truck-loading facilities, among other items. GVEA chief executive Cory Borgeson said a 20-acre site on the slope has already been purchased. About 23 trucks per day are expected to rumble down the Dalton Highway to Fairbanks carrying LNG. Borgeson said GVEA and CB&I are looking at using custom-built 13,500-gallon capacity LNG tanker trucks, instead of the conventional 10,000-gallon tankers, that would also use LNG as fuel. “We have to buy the gas, process it, ship it and then vaporise it,” Borgeson said. Restrictions on coal and shrinking supplies of gas from the Cook Inlet area to the south have left Fairbanks in dire need of more fuel for power and heat.