May 8--Relations are strained between Gov. Sarah Palin and the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority, an independent state corporation formed under a voter initiative in 2002 to bring new gas supplies to Alaska communities.

The state administration froze the authority's money earlier this year, only recently relenting to approve purchase authorizations, and a senior administration official acknowledged during a legislative hearing that a "transition" at the authority was discussed in the governor's office with its chairman, Scott Heyworth, and that executive director Harold Heinze figured into the conversation.

Heinze is a respected former Atlantic Richfield Co. executive who has managed the authority since its inception. Heyworth said later he did not feel pressured at the meeting to take any action.

The gas authority has been working for several years on a plan for a 20-inch or 24-inch spur line that would branch off a large-diameter pipeline built to the Lower 48 through Interior Alaska.

The optimal route for a spur line, the authority believes, is to branch off at Delta, east of Fairbanks, run south to Glennallen parallel to the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, and then along the Glenn Highway to a terminus near Palmer, where it could connect with Enstar's existing Southcentral gas pipeline system.

Assuming a large gas pipeline is built, this route appears to be the cheapest way to get gas to Southcentral Alaska, the authority has maintained. If a liquefied natural gas plant is built someday in Valdez, so much the better, because a separate spur to Valdez should supply gas to the plant and the larger volumes being shipped would lower the cost of shipping gas on to the Anchorage area.

Palin, however, appears to have switched her support from a spur line off the big pipeline to a bullet line proposed to be built between Southcentral Alaska and the North Slope, a project proposed by Enstar Natural Gas Co.

The move seems to indicate the governor's concern that a big pipeline might be delayed or not built, and that some initiative needs to be taken to bring North Slope gas to Southcentral Alaska because gas reserves in producing fields in the region are being depleted.

For now, Palin wants the gas authority to look at the Parks Highway as an alternative route for a spur line or a bullet line all the way to the North Slope.

Last spring the governor appointed Harry Noah, a former state resource commissioner and mining executive, to lead in-state gas issues. It was a move that apparently sidelines the gas authority, and Heinze in the process.

The governor also persuaded the Legislature to appropriate $7 million to conduct a study of the two routes and to begin preliminary engineering for a bullet line. Lawmakers put the money in the governor's office, where Noah will direct its use.

Noah has also asked the gas authority to stop work on an environmental impact statement for its Richardson Highway spur line and to modify it to include both the Parks and Richardson highway routes south from Fairbanks as well as the segment for a bullet line from Fairbanks to the North Slope.

The gas authority has said no, so far. Its EIS is to be done by the end of 2009 and to stop now would add complications, the authority's board told Noah in an April 8 meeting.

Heinze said it would be better to initiate separate EIS efforts for the Parks Highway and northern segment rather than stop what ANGDA now has underway. Noah sharply disagreed and said it would be more cost-efficient to do one EIS covering all options.