Trump's Golden Age creates energy crisis in Alaska

As Trump’s Golden Age of Alaska continues, we are facing a multi-faceted energy crisis that demands our leaders recognize the complexity and urgency of the moment.

The looming shortage of natural gas for Southcentral Alaska, crippling increases in the price of fuel across Alaska, especially in the villages, and electricity rates pushing 33 cents a kilowatt hour in Fairbanks are monumental issues.

The baying of Alaska’s governor, Sen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Nick Begich the Third about the gas pipeline has become a dangerous distraction that prevents the public from grasping reality.

Their refusal to admit that Trump’s stupid decision to go to war against Iran—not understanding how easy it would be for Iran to disrupt world energy markets—has made every problem far worse in delaying our ability to begin to respond in an intelligent fashion.

That Trump’s reckless war is pushing villages to the edge of extinction and making life more difficult in Fairbanks needs to be recognized. That Anchorage and all of Southcentral Alaska could soon face a catastrophe should be generating a sense of panic.

The gas pipeline, if it is ever built, will not happen soon enough to provide any relief.

But Dunleavy is claiming “we really don’t have an option but to build this gas line.”

He’s wrong.

I don’t have space here to count the ways in which the gas pipeline might never be built.

So it is not smart to assume the gas line will be built and assume “That will dramatically drop the cost of energy for folks on the Railbelt,” as Dunleavy does.

By now the state should have already taken steps to get all the interested parties in the same room to settle contracts to import natural gas from British Columbia to supply Southcentral.

Dunleavy, Sullivan and Begich are probably afraid of the political signal that would be sent by importing natural gas, so the Trump cheerleaders have dithered and dodged and portrayed the gas line as a saving grace.

There is no time to wait on the import plan. There is also no time to wait on getting the state to intervene and sort out the intricacies of uniting the Railbelt utilities to use the intertie to transfer electric power where it is needed.

We also need a state-backed plan to promote the expansion of solar power and batteries—if for no other reason than every gallon of high-priced fuel that is not burned when the sun is shining can reduce the annual consumption of diesel and make it easier to get through the winter.

As to the Trump Golden Age price of energy in Alaska, the state will collect a lot more money from oil taxes and royalties if the Trump war bonus to the oil and gas industry persists.

The Wall Street Journal wrote today that electricity consumers in Hawaii and parts of Alaska are getting hit harder than almost anyone in the U.S. by Trump’s war.

“The power markets in Hawaii and Alaska are among the first in the U.S. to feel the reverberations of the global energy shock caused by the Iran war. The U.S. grid has been resilient for the most part because domestically produced natural gas—the country’s main fuel for generating power—is actually cheaper now than it was at the start of the conflict,” the Journal reported.

“Petroleum accounts for only a sliver of power generation nationally but is of outsize importance in more remote regions. Last year, more than 70% of Hawaii’s large-scale power generation and 16% of Alaska’s came from petroleum liquids, according to the Energy Information Administration,” the newspaper said.

In the Lower 48, natural gas prices are about 6 percent down since the start of Trump’s war, about $2.69 per million British thermal units, far cheaper than in Alaska.

The story quoted Travis Million, the CEO of the Golden Valley Electric Association, as saying he isn’t sure what to tell members about future electric rates, except they will be higher.

“It’s a tough message to put out there,” he said, after a cold winter.

“Golden Valley has about 50,000 metered connections and serves an area the size of Connecticut. The nonprofit cooperative added 70,000 barrels of fuel storage in December, roughly enough to hold a 30-day supply, but it couldn’t fill the new tanks before the war because the cold winter had already strained refinery supplies, Million said.”

Prices for diesel and naphtha rose 50 percent in March with Trump’s war.

“We see those prices change basically on a daily basis, as it’s changing in the world market,” said Million.

I’ll close this glimpse of the Trump Golden Age of Alaska with a reminder that Dunleavy announced three years ago he wanted to cut electricity prices to 10 cents a kilowatt hour by 2030.

“Now some people will say that’s incredibly optimistic, we can’t do that, etc., etc., etc. But I’ve gotta remind you of a couple of things done in history here in the not-too-distant past. 1961, John F. Kennedy said we’re gonna go to the moon by the end of the decade,” Dunleavy told his energy task force, a group he wanted to tell him how to get to 10 cents.

“People laughed at him, nobody can go the moon. That’s impossible. It can’t be done.”

“We went to the moon,” Dunleavy told his task force.

“When I was a kid in the 1960s, we would never have dreamed of things like cell phones or breaking up AT&T, from Ma Bell into different phone utilities. We would have never thought about being able to speak simultaneously with somebody in North America, in Asia, in Australia. There are a lot of things we never thought could happen, but because people believed. And I’m going to underline that, believed that it could, we did,” he said.

“You guys have been selected due in large part to the belief on my side of things that you guys can make things happen,” he said at the first task force meeting, repeating the 10-cent goal.

He asked the task force members to believe in 10-cent power and figure out how to pull off a moonshot.

Constrained by reality, the Dunleavy task force did not create a plan to cut electric rates to 10 cents. There was no plan for a moonshot in its final report.

Dunleavy abandoned his alleged 10-cent goal and stopped talking about going to the moon.

He soon started talking about the Golden Age of Alaska created by Trump.

A year ago Dunleavy told the Hudson Institute, a right-wing think tank in Washington, D.C. that construction of the Alaska LNG pipeline could begin in 2026.

A final investment decision was expected last fall and “quite possibly you would have potential construction here in a year, year-and-a-half.” A final investment decision has not been made.

"You could see the pipe being built next summer, into the following year,” Dunleavy said last May, with gas flowing in 2028-2029.

(A year ago in April he told Fox Business that gas would be flowing in late 2027.)

“That's happening under President Trump. So we'll see gas flowing under President Trump is the goal,” said Dunleavy.

Sen. Dan Sullivan claimed to Fox News on April 10, 2025 that “We’re talking about laying pipe as early as the end of this year, the beginning of next year,” meaning the beginning of 2026.

“And it’s got President Trump’s name all over it, cause if it happens, it will be largely due to him,” Sullivan said.

“It’s morning again in Alaska,” Sullivan said a year ago.

“The Golden Age of America has begun,” Begich the Third said a year ago.

It was a year ago on February 21st when Dunleavy told the right-wingers at CPAC that everything had changed in Alaska the moment Trump was elected.

“It was like Christmas for me and I am 63 years old, so I was hopping all over the place,” he said.

The “Great Expansion” under Trump to create the Golden Age of America was in progress.

“Boy oh boy, the sun rose again on November 5th, that’s all I can tell you. It’s Christmas every day now,” he said.

Ho ho ho.

Your contributions help support independent analysis and political commentary by Alaska reporter and author Dermot Cole. Thank you for reading and for your support. Either click here to use PayPal or send checks to: Dermot Cole, Box 10673, Fairbanks, AK 99710-0673.