{"id":29436,"date":"2016-10-14T08:03:36","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T15:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/agrium-reconsiders-nikiski-plant-but-needs-natural-gas\/"},"modified":"2016-10-14T08:03:36","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T15:03:36","slug":"agrium-reconsiders-nikiski-plant-but-needs-natural-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/agrium-reconsiders-nikiski-plant-but-needs-natural-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"Agrium reconsiders Nikiski plant, but needs natural gas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>JUNEAU<\/strong> \u2014 Owners of shuttered fertilizer plant in Nikiski have taken steps to reopen the facility but face the hurdle of obtaining a reliable supply of natural gas.<\/p>\n<p>Agrium\u2019s Nikiski plant was the second-largest producer of ammonia and urea before the company in 2007 announced it would be decommissioned.<\/p>\n<p>Reopening would add hundreds of jobs to the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska\u2019s Energy Desk reported.<\/p>\n<p>Agrium in 2015 obtained air-quality and pollution permits for the plant. The hope for a jolt to the economy was bolstered when Agrium this year sought a permit to discharge waste from the Nikiski plant.<\/p>\n<p>All three permits are required for the plant to reopen but finding a large, steady supply of natural gas remains a challenge.<\/p>\n<p>The company has been in talks with Cook Inlet natural gas producers, Agrium manager of government relations Adam Diamond said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re talking volumes that are large volumes,\u201d Diamond said. \u201cOne half of the plant uses 80 million cubic feet of gas a day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cook Inlet natural gas discoveries in the last five years piqued the company\u2019s interest, Diamond said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s still, you know, \u2018We believe there\u2019s X amount of gas in the ground.\u2019 But that\u2019s very different than, there\u2019s X amount of gas flowing through the pipeline,\u201d Diamond said.<\/p>\n<p>Reopening the plant would cost Agrium an estimated $200 million.<\/p>\n<p>In the last legislative session, House Speaker Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, helped push through a bill that would give Agrium a tax break if it uses gas from a state lease.<\/p>\n<p>The company has proposed reopening two of its four production lines and hiring about 140 people. A larger natural gas supply could mean more production and another 100 jobs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen they were running at their peak performance, they were employing about 400 employees,\u201d Chenault said. \u201cAll of them good paying jobs. And all those were local jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JUNEAU \u2014 Owners of shuttered fertilizer plant in Nikiski have taken steps to reopen the facility but face the hurdle of obtaining a reliable supply of natural gas. Agrium\u2019s Nikiski plant was the second-largest producer of ammonia and urea before the company in 2007 announced it would be decommissioned. Reopening would add hundreds of jobs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-29436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29436"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=29436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}