Palin’s Pipeline Counters Natural-Gas Cartel

With Russia and Iran seeking to form a natural gas cartel along the lines of OPEC, one project will likely insulate the U.S. against higher gas prices — the $40 billion pipeline Gov. Sarah Palin pushed through in Alaska.

“If OPEC strikes you as a bad group, the new cartel for natural gas, led by Russia and Iran, will be even worse,” Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) stated in an editorial.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin last year said “a gas OPEC is an interesting idea,” and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently drew up the proposed organization’s charter, which he will soon take to Moscow.

Iran’s Gas Exporting Countries Forum will first seek to gain control of reserves through state firms in 14 nations, including Venezuela, with an ultimate goal of controlling production. That will kill competition and “bodes ill for the global gas market,” according to IBD.

As of now, the U.S. is fairly self-sufficient in natural gas. Demand is certain to increase, but “Palin effectively beat back the ambitious petrotyrants 10 years early” with her 1,715-mile pipeline across Canada that will bring 4.5 trillion cubic feet of gas to the lower 48 states — almost one-fifth of projected needs — within a decade, the editorial discloses.

“Palin mowed down 30 years of legislative squabbling in the Alaska Statehouse and then triumphantly signed off on the pipeline in August,” IBD noted.

“Heading off the gas cartel is an important move, and Palin deserves recognition.”