Alaska is teeming with natural resources but it needs improved transportation networks to ship products to southern markets, Murkowski said Tuesday.

The big vision project includes building a 2,174-mile natural gas pipeline from Alaska to northern Alberta, where it will connect with an existing pipeline that ships energy to the southern United States, he said.

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The project also includes extending the state-owned Alaska Railway line to northern British Columbia where it will join now privately owned B.C. Rail at Dease Lake and extend an existing highway connection in Southeast Alaska about 31 miles into northwestern British Columbia, Murkowski said.

"The justification for this is to open up the country," he said. "It's in everybody's interest in North America. Everyone will be a beneficiary."

The estimated cost for the pipeline from Alaska to Alberta is $20 billion and the rail extension into northern British Columbia is $3.5 billion, said Murkowski.

He said he has been lobbying the federal government in Ottawa to support the project and has scheduled meetings in the fall in Canada to pitch the development.

"To date we have not received official response on the bilateral co-operation issue," said Murkowski in a luncheon speech to a joint northwestern Canada-U.S. business conference.

"Ottawa was warming up to the prospects. What we see is a growing momentum."

Political and business representatives from British Columbia, Alberta and Yukon Territory, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Oregon have been in Victoria this week attending the annual Pacific Northwest Economic Region summit.

Murkowski's economic proposal received lukewarm response from an economic minister in British Columbia's Liberal cabinet.

"The more trade corridors we have among our various jurisdictions the better," said John Les, small business and economic development minister.

"His vision of tying several of these corridors together, pipelines, railroads, fiber-optics and all those things, is fairly well thought out, and hopefully it can see the light of day some time in the not to distant future."

British Columbia markets many of the same resource products Alaska wants to ship south but enjoys a location that is closer to the big markets, Les said.

Murkowski said he wants the Alaska rail and pipeline projects running by 2011.

He said he didn't have any estimates on how much money it would cost Canada to join the development but speculated it will be up to Canadian governments to work out their costs.

Murkowski said past and current trade disputes with Canada over softwood lumber tariffs and U.S. restrictions on imports of Canadian beef due to a mad cow disease scare should not derail his project.

"We've got too many things going forward to go back and reflect on shortcomings or differences," he said.