Interior Gas Utility celebrates arrival of North Slope natural gas to Fairbanks
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTUU/KTVF) — Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is now being supplied to Fairbanks from the North Slope, a change years in the making of the supply source for Interior Gas Utility (IGU), which provides natural gas as a heating source for 3,600 customers around the region.
This development, according to IGU General Manager Elena Sudduth, is expected to improve both access and reliability of the resource due to increased capacity to liquefy the natural gas.
“We have increased our ability to bring more LNG in, and with our already increased storage capacity, it’s only going to get better,” Sudduth said.
Natural gas prices in the Interior, which are set by IGU’s Board of Directors every July 1 for the following fiscal year, were unaffected in 2025 by the change.
To celebrate the North Slope development, the utility held an event in Fairbanks which drew community members and political officials.
According to Sudduth, contracts to switch the utility’s natural gas source from the Cook Inlet to the North Slope were signed in January 2023, and now agreements have been made between IGU and Hilcorp for the supply of gas, Harvest Midstream to process it into LNG, and Middle Fork Logistics for trucking it down the Dalton Highway to the Interior in IGU-owned trailers.
Sudduth said the first delivery took place on October 9 and sustained deliveries began on December 1. Now an average of five or six trucks a day arrive in Fairbanks, each carrying about 14,000 gallons of LNG, more than the area’s average current supply needs.
This will not always be the case, as the utility expects to take periodic breaks from these deliveries and use its storage, totaling five and a half million gallons between its Fairbanks and North Pole facilities, to continue supplying customers before refilling its reserves with another round of deliveries.
IGU typically distributes around 100,000 gallons a day of gas during the winter months and as low as 20,000 gallons in the summer. On January 8, IGU hit an all-time record of 138,000 gallons sent out to the community in a single day. 00:05:40
Meanwhile, the utility continues to add customers to its roster, with the number of people being served tripling in the last six years as community members use a borough program to switch their heating systems over to natural gas and IGU expands its mainline infrastructure to more communities in the region.
North Pole, in particular, is currently the utility’s largest area of growth.
“In the last two years, we’ve installed about 17 miles of additional mainline, enabling us to have access to a lot more, more potential consumers,” Sudduth said.
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