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The Alaska Gasline Port Authority is alive and kicking.

Legislative consultants are reviewing the economics of a liquefied natural gas project. House Speaker John Harris is now openly supporting an “all-Alaska” line. And Port authority reps just traveled to China and Japan with a handful of lawmakers to talk gas.

“We continue to work on aspects of our project,” project manager Bill Walker told me today. “We’re still out there in the all-Alaska effort.”

Walker sounded like he had a big announcement to make, but he held his tongue.

Lawmakers are set to take up gas line issues June 3, and while the focus is likely to be on the TransCanada pipeline proposal, the port authority will surely play a role.

Here’s how it boils down. TransCanada applied under AGIA to build a large-scale pipeline going into Canada. The port authority applied under AGIA to build a large-scale (but smaller) pipe going entirely through Alaska and using LNG. (Their application was rejected.) ConocoPhillips and BP proposed outside AGIA to build a large-scale pipeline going into Canada.

When energy prices went through the roof this year, lawmakers started looking at natural gas as a way to lower energy prices rather than a way to provide state revenues for decades to come. The focus shifted to an “instate” gas line that could be built quicker than a large-scale line.

But it was never quite clear what “instate” meant. Was it just a small “bullet line” from the North Slope to the Anchorage area, or could it also be a somewhat larger line to Valdez, as the port authority proposed? And would an instate line complement a large-scale line or compete with it?

Walker said today he saw the port authority project as a complement to a later line running into Canada. Start off with the pipeline to Valdez -- which could be completed in six years, he said -- and then tack on the line into Canada if and when TransCanada or the producers figure out the permitting issues and everything else.

But the port authority is also a competitor, or at least a player. AGIA bars the state from giving a license to TransCanada and then supporting another project in any way if it’s bigger than a certain size, which the port authority’s is.

If the port authority truly asks for nothing from the state, there’s still the issue of how much gas it’s project would take away from a Canadian project. If it does ask for something from the state, then supporting the port authority for the instate project would amount to picking the producers over TransCanada for the Canadian portion.

“It could be interpreted as a spoiler,” Walker said, “but it could also be interpreted as a solution.”

Port authority officials have complained for years that North Slope producers won’t sell them their gas, and have argued that leaving things up to the producers would mean no pipeline for decades. Last year, they championed AGIA as a fair process.

And the port authority still has to secure gas for its project. Even if the group gets the state to commit all of its royalty share of the producer-leased gas (without the producers producing it), it would still need to get one major producer to commit all of its gas to fill even a 2 bcf pipeline. (TransCanada is talking about a 4.5 bcf pipeline.)

So Walker’s willingness to interfere with AGIA (assuming Palin does back the TransCanada proposal) struck me as a little odd.

Walker responded that an instate project could actually help spur a Canadian line, whether the producers built it or whether there has to be another competitive process like AGIA.

“We’re not out to be a spoiler,” he said. “We’re out to get gas to Alaskans.”