Interesting political connections seem to be developing between the 49th and 50th states on the issue of natural gas. That’s according to this story  in the Anchorage Daily News.

Alaska has long been trying to find a market for its abundant natural gas resources so maybe Hawaii is the ticket. Alaska already has an export facility south of Anchorage, the first of its kind in the country, that ships tanker loads to Japan.

For us, there’s that pesky Jones Act though, that requires shipping between U.S. ports to be on U.S. ships with U.S. crews. Alaska’s federal gas czar (yes, they have one of those) wrote this column for Civil Beat last week explaining the ups and downs of the whole idea.

Now HawaiiGas (formerly known as The Gas Co.) has filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to import LNG to Hawaii.

Maybe they’ll all come together at this week’s big Asia-Pacific Clean Energy Summit being held in Honolulu.