Well, I guess if Sarah Palin can lie about her role in building a "road to nowhere" leading to a "bridge to nowhere," she can also lie about a natural gas pipeline project. Here is what Palin said last night:
...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.
Uh, no. According to the Washington Post "Pinocchio" fact checkers, the pipeline "is still more glimmer than reality."
.... the pipeline project, which dates from the 1970s, is still at least a decade from being built -- if it is built at all.Not a single section of the pipeline has been laid. And some Alaskan lawmakers have begun to have second thoughts about Palin's approach to the project. When she became governor, she walked away from a deal negotiated by her predecessor with major oil companies, instead opening up the bidding in a way that would commit the state to pay a subsidy to offset costs and expenses. TransCanada Alaska Co. won the bid. Some estimates indicate the state could lose as much as $500 million on the deal pushed by Palin.
In other words, either Sarah Palin doesn't know what's going on in her own state - quite plausible, since she imagines seeing Russia from her house (700 miles away from a remote, uninhabited Russian island) and since she couldn't remember the June 2008 Supreme Court decision on the huge Exxon Valdez case - or we can simply add this to the 18 19 numerous lies she told last night. And this one's a whopper!
By the way, I can't figure out exactly what she's saying about "North America's largest and most expensive infrastructure project ever to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets," but obviously if no project has ever brought those natural gas reserves to market, then that would by definition be the "most expensive infrastructure project" - and the least, and the only. Duhhhhhh.
UPDATE: From the Energy Information Administration -- "It has not been considered commercially feasible to build a natural gas pipeline linking ANS natural gas with markets in the Lower 48 States, although two separate consortia have filed project applications with the State of Alaska."
Alaska's North Slope fields also represent a large potential natural gas source, with an estimated 30-35 Tcf of natural gas reserves. Alaska's Governor Tony Knowles has stated that he supports a $17.2 billion natural gas pipeline running from the North Slope along the Alaska Highway into Alberta and on to markets in the U.S. Midwest (another option would be to route the pipeline via the MacKenzie Delta in northern Canada).