From Sean Cockerham in Anchorage –

When Harry Noah quit as the governor’s in-state gas pipeline chief, he wrote an email saying it was because he needed time to deal with a family farming business in Oregon.

But Rep. Jay Ramras continues to insist there was much more to it than that, and he wrote a letter to Gov. Sean Parnell today about it.

“I assure you from the conversations he and I had, it was not to go back to Oregon to work on the cherry orchard,” Ramras wrote. “Rather, it was frustration and disappointment that senior public officials were intermittently involving themselves by derailing progress on the Bullet Line project.”

Ramras wrote that Noah told him the day he resigned two weeks ago that “Jay, every time I nail down a floor board, Tom and Marty (commissioner and deputy commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources) come right behind me and pull it up.”

Tom Irwin and Marty Rutherford didn’t respond after Noah’s resignation but Parnell reiterated his support for the project.

Read Ramras’ letter here. In it, Ramras writes of instances where he asserts the department of natural resources was a problem. Ramras argues the proposed bullet line to ship North Slope gas to the Railbelt is at risk and Parnell needs to look into it.