Submitted by Staff Reporter on 01/02/2017 – 17:28.
The Interior Gas Utility Board will meet Tuesday night in Fairbanks City Council Chambers to discuss a Memorandum of Understanding with Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, or AIDEA, for the acquisition of Pentex Alaska, and the financing and integration of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Natural Gas Utilities.
Additionally, the M-O-U commits the State of Alaska, through AIDEA, to finance over 330 million dollars of new infrastructure over the next 12 years.
The terms of the sale of Pentex, and the financing committed by both parties within the M-O-U, are structured to meet the goals of the Interior Energy Project by supplying low price gas to significantly more customers in the Fairbanks North Star Borough.
It also provides a new option for improving air quality in the region’s most sensitive areas.
In December, the North Pole City council re-appointed Bill Butler as the City’s I-G-U Board Representative.
He described the on-going negotiations as they stood at that time: “It’s been contention, especially lately. Any time you get into tough negotiations, it gets that way. In some ways, I’m glad to see this getting there because I don’t think we were making progress. Now, I think we are making some progress to make something happen. If things had started moving forward about a month or two ago, I told the mayor I would not want to be re-extended because of the situation going well. So hopefully we are moving forward to resolve this issue. I think the major area of contention is that AIDEA bought natural gas. I think AIDEA wants to be paid back for the money they spent.”
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