Harvest Alaska (Harvest), announced an agreement with Marathon Petroleum Corporation (MPC) and Chugach Electric Association (Chugach) to bolster Southcentral Alaska's energy supplies through Harvest's acquisition and re-development of the existing Kenai LNG Terminal, currently owned by a subsidiary of MPC. The project is designed to repurpose existing assets to enable the timely delivery of additional natural gas supplies to the Southcentral market as early as 2026, with full-scale operations beginning as early as 2028.
Under the proposal, Harvest would own, develop and operate the LNG terminal and infrastructure – allowing Chugach, MPC and any other Railbelt customers to secure additional natural gas supplies to help meet the market demand.
The project leverages MPC's legacy LNG export infrastructure to alleviate the potential short-term natural gas shortage facing Southcentral Alaska. The facility includes existing dock infrastructure which was historically capable of handling LNG vessels up to 138,000 cubic meters (approximately 2.9 billion cubic feet of natural gas) and onsite tankage with a storage capacity of 107,000 cubic meters (approximately 2.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas). This infrastructure, combined with existing FERC approvals, positions the facility to meet near-term energy needs while longer-term alternatives are developed.
"Harvest has a long history of operating critical oil and gas infrastructure across the State and this announcement furthers our commitment to ensuring Alaska has the energy it needs," Harvest CEO Jason Rebrook said. "By repurposing Marathon's existing LNG facility, we aim to provide certainty to the Southcentral gas market while meeting the needs of Railbelt utilities. We are proud to collaborate with Marathon, Chugach Electric and other Southcentral utilities to bring this project online to ensure the reliable delivery of natural gas in timely and cost-efficient manner."
Chugach, which is in discussions with Harvest to utilize the Kenai LNG facility, emphasized the importance of this partnership in addressing the energy needs of Southcentral families, businesses and ratepayers.
"Providing our members with safe, reliable and affordable electric service is core to our values and mission. We are pleased to have a potential solution to meet the gas needs of our members and at the right time," said Chugach CEO, Arthur Miller. "We've been looking at options to fill the gap left by our expiring Hilcorp contract, which ends on March 31, 2028. This is a great opportunity to work with partners who have extensive experience and knowledge of gas operations in Alaska. We look forward to ongoing discussions and analysis with Harvest Alaska as they progress the front-end engineering and design study over the next several months."
MPC expressed strong support for the project and noted the benefits it can provide to the region.
"We believe the Kenai LNG terminal offers the quickest and lowest-cost solution to bring additional natural gas to Southcentral Alaska and beyond," said Bruce Jackman, Vice President of MPC's Kenai Refinery. "Our Kenai refinery employees work around the clock to provide gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to their fellow Alaskans, and a reliable supply of natural gas is critical to the refinery's operations. We're excited about this partnership with Harvest and Chugach to work toward bringing new natural gas to the region."
