Dunleavy promises cheap electricity is just around the corner in the Golden Age

Gov. Mike Dunleavy told the Resource Development Council Thursday that he expects a big announcement to move forward on the Alaska LNG pipeline in two months, with construction starting next year. He would be shocked if the project stalls, he said.

This rosy view appears to be founded on the idea that Donald Trump will succeed in forcing Japan, South Korea and other Asian nations to pay for the pipeline, whether they like it or not. Dunleavy says that the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. and Glenfarne are telling him that there are no glitches that will derail the proposal.

I still don’t believe it will happen. What’s more likely is that Asian nations will buy time in a drive to wait out Trump with tentative pledges of financial support. A promise to pay for a project costing $$60 billion or $70 billion won’t be made lightly.

But Dunleavy is a true Trump believer. The governor claimed the pipeline will bring “cheap electricity” to Alaska and he has a new vision of Alaska becoming the “cornerstone of the data world.” It will be the Golden Age of Alaska.

Oh, and Dunleavy said he will have a fiscal plan for the Legislature, which would make Alaska the most competitive state in the nation. By this he probably means recycling his proposals to make tax increases nearly impossible.

I don’t believe that cheap electricity or a real fiscal plan is any more likely than a gas line.

A genuine fiscal plan would be one that is circulated among Alaskans in advance, with plenty of time for comment, and not held until the last legislative session of the administration, when it will be difficult to find buyers for whatever he tries to sell.

Here is what Dunleavy said about the gas line, the fiscal plan, the data center dream, etc.

“I have to tell you it’s the real deal. I will be shocked, shocked, not surprised, shocked if in December or January there’s anything other than we’re going to FID (final investment decision on the gas pipeline) and next year when we have this conference (Resource Development Council) there will be pipe on the ground and pipe actually moving. So that’s the future.”

“That means cheap electricity for residents, that means cheap electricity for businesses to come up to Alaska. We’ve been having great conversations with crypto currency outfits, data farms, folks that wanna build processors. And they’re looking at Alaska more and more because they know the gas line has got some legs. But they also know that we have support in the federal government. We just have to make sure that in our own state government, the executive, the Legislature, that we get alignment as we go forward for this next and last session."

"Alignment on a whole host of things. We’re gonna be introducing a fiscal package to the, to the Legislature. But it’s comprehensive. It’s not just gonna be a tax-and-spend approach. It’s gonna be how do we make Alaska the most competitive state in the country for investment in our resources, in our investments in AI, our investments in data centers. My vision is that Alaska will be the center, the cornerstone for the data world. And some may laugh, laugh. But there’s already projects in which that they want to bring fiber over from Europe to Alaska to Asia. Additional fiber coming up from North America to Alaska. We, we could be the North American, European, Asian hub for data, here in the next year or so."

“And so I’m excited about the future, but again we’re gonna introduce a couple bills into the Legislature. I just need the Legislature to have an honest, sincere look at those bills because I think they’ll see the same thing that I do. And that is if we can make this state the most competitive, not OK, but the absolutely most competitive to compete with Texas, or the South Dakotas, or the Utahs, we will get an unbelievable amount of investment in this state of Alaska. And it’ll definitely revolutionize where this state’s gonna go over the next 50 years.”

“When I talk with the federal folks, when I talk with the Asian potential buyers, they are all waiting for the final verdict on FEED, (front-end engineering and design) which is the pipe that we’re talking about. You know, there’s a couple of things I’ve learned about gas projects, obviously. And one is that if you had a pipe and our pipe is 800 miles long, that’s the most risky part of the proposition. Meaning, what is it gonna cost, what has inflation done to it?”

“A $10 billion pipe, for example, is not $10 billion dollars worth of steel. It’s about $1 billion dollars worth of steel. Steel’s only 10 percent of a pipe project. The other stuff’s logistics, labor, environmental etc.”

“They brought up a team of pipeline builders, and contractors and engineers here a couple weeks ago. And they went down the whole corridor where the pipeline is gonna be. And in many cases they were amazed that it wasn’t being hacked through virgin wilderness. It’s following the trans-Alaska oil pipeline route, then it goes west and it’s following the highway, the transmission lines and the railroad. And so from their perspective it actually looked even better once they got to look at the lay of the land.”

Dunleavy said he calls Frank Richards, CEO of the Alaska Gasline Development Corp., and Brendan Duval, CEO of Glenfarne, at all hours to ask how things are going and more.

Arrogance in action

The Trump administration is crowing about the cancellation of a $20 million flood-control grant to Kipnuk in the spring, claiming the money could never have been spent before the community was hit by the massive storm that did severe damage in western Alaska.

EPA leader Lee Zeldin claims that it was a brilliant decision to cancel the grant.

"To be brutally candid, due to the proactive cancellation of this grant, $20 million of hardworking U.S. tax dollars are currently sitting in the U.S. treasury instead of swept into the Kuskokwim River,” Zeldin said.

“As for the clowns who want the EPA to light tens of billions of tax dollars on fire, we refuse to bend the knee and play along,” Zeldin boasted.

The Anchorage Daily News has a solid story about years of inaction.

Zeldin, who brags about cutting “wasteful DEI and environmental justice grants,” including the Kipnuk money, lies that a New York Times story on the cancellation is “dishonest left-wing hackery.”

Dunleavy, who denies the reality of climate change, offered his opinion to the Daily News: “Oftentimes, they call these incidents an ‘act of God,’” Dunleavy said when asked this week whether he thought the storm was caused by climate change and if the state should more proactively plan for future, similar storms.”

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