From Richard Mauer in Juneau --

The House majority leader returned to work after last week’s Energy Council break with a significant dose of pessimism about the future of a big gas pipeline from Alaska through Canada to the Lower 48.

The source of that concern: new techniques that can be used to free gas and oil from huge shale deposits in the Plains states.

House Speaker Mike Chenault (l) and House Majority Leader Kyle Johansen discuss prospects for gasline at a Monday news conference in the Capitol.

“The projections for the amount of natural gas going on to the world market in the next 5 to 10 years was astounding,” Rep. Kyle Johansen said a news conference hosted by the House majority this morning. He described the personal effect as “disconcerting.”

More than 20 legislators left Juneau last week to attend meetings of the Energy Council in Washington, D.C. They’re back at work today.

Johansen said that at least for him, the trip was worth it, though experts and activists have been warning Alaskans about competition from shale gas for at least a year. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that North Dakota could surpass Alaska in oil production by the end of the next decade. Even more gas will be coming to market worldwide, Johansen said.

“We always look at ourselves in the context of the United States,” Johansen said. “We’ve got the most oil, the most gas, the most coal, the most fish, the most coastline. We’ve got the most of everything.” But in the context of the global economy, he said, “we’re a tiny little peon in the oil and gas world.”

Johansen said planning should still move forward on a gasline, but it had hardly the celebrity in Washington that it had in years past.

“Alaska gas wasn’t a topic of anybody but me and the other folks asking about it,” he said. “Shale was the big issue.”

House speaker Mike Chenault, a Kenai Republican with roots in the oil industry, said that petroleum from shale also has unsolved technical and environmental issues, not the least involving the huge amounts of water needed to fracture the rock underground to release gas and oil.

“It may or may not be a 100-year gas supply for America,” Chenault said at the same news conference. But, he added, it’s something any company considering investing billions in an Alaska-Canada line would have to consider.

“While we may not think it’s a big issue, the effect that it could have on a big line through Canada could potentially be huge,” Chenault said.

That was all the more reason for studying an instate line from the North Slope to the Railbelt, he said.

“If the big line falls flat, we need to make sure we’re trying to take care of the energy needs of the state and not the U.S.,” he said.