By SUZANNE DOWNING
March 6, 2026 – Just when you think things can’t get any worse in the Alaska Legislature, someone shakes the crazy tree in Juneau and all the nuts roll into the Capitol.
This year, that tree appears to have Sen. Cathy Giessel, Senate majority leader, as one of the nuts falling off the crazy tree.
Once considered a reliable supporter of Alaska’s oil and gas industry, Giessel has undergone what can only be described as a remarkable political transformation. Her latest legislation, Senate Bill 275, reads like a blueprint for sabotaging the largest economic opportunity Alaska has seen in …. well, ever.
Alaskans should be asking a simple question: How does this bill advance the Alaska LNG project?
The short answer is: It doesn’t. It appears to do the opposite.
The Alaska LNG project is on the cusp of becoming reality. Global instability, particularly in the Middle East, has investors looking hard at stable energy suppliers. Alaska suddenly looks attractive again. Asian buyers are paying attention. Energy markets are tightening.
This is precisely the moment when Alaska should be sending a signal that it is open for business.
Instead, Giessel’s SB 275 sends a different message entirely: political interference, regulatory uncertainty, and the possibility of state takeover. Socialism.
The bill dramatically expands legislative oversight of the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation and the LNG project. It requires legislative approval for major transactions, limits confidentiality agreements that are standard in international energy deals, and forces public disclosure of ownership, financing, lenders, and even customers purchasing gas.
It also gives the state the ability to take control of a project after construction, with legislative approval.
What is she thinking?
Imagine asking private investors to risk tens of billions of dollars building a project while telling them the state might step in later and buy it out. No serious investor would accept those terms.
The legislation also adds a bunch of new taxes and surcharges targeting gas pipelines, gas treatment, LNG processing, carbon capture, and other parts of the industry.
In other words, it raises the cost of doing business at the exact moment Alaska should be lowering barriers.
The cumulative effect is unmistakable: the groundwork for a state-dominated gasline, a government energy company.
That approach has a name: Socialism. And it is exactly the kind of policy that drives investment away.
What makes this even more baffling is the timing. The Alaska LNG project is poised to bring thousands of high-paying jobs, billions of dollars in economic activity, and a long-term supply of affordable natural gas for Alaskan homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses.
It would diversify the state’s economy and secure energy for generations.
By any measure, it is the largest infrastructure project in Alaska history, the largest energy project ever attempted in the Arctic, and potentially one of the largest energy developments on the planet over the next two years.
So why would Giessel want to sabotage it now? Why is she reaching into the jaws of victory to snatch defeat?
Well, Giessel’s recent record suggests this isn’t an isolated move. Earlier this year, she led efforts in Senate Resources to rewrite major portions of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s fiscal plan. The committee stripped out the governor’s proposed sales tax and inserted a new progressive income-based “education head tax,” creating what is clearly a statutory foothold for a future income tax. Especially since there are no designated funds allowed by the state constitution. This is just general fund money, no matter what she calls it.
The committee also inserted a massive oil tax change, a minimum gross tax of 17.5 percent on production before costs, pushing the total burden with royalties to roughly 30%.
That’s madness, but being pushed through without project-level modeling and without expert testimony explaining its economic impact.
Just last year, Giessel herself insisted that modeling must be done before tax changes moved forward. This year, that requirement has magically disappeared in her mind. And now comes SB 275 , a total rewrite of how Alaska’s gasline project could be controlled and taxed.
Stack these moves together and a troubling pattern emerges: higher taxes, more government control, and increasing political intervention in the industries that actually fund Alaska’s economy.
You don’t see this behavior in other energy states — Texas doesn’t do it, Wyoming doesn’t do it, South Dakota doesn’t do it.
Even heavily Democratic states rarely move to sabotage their own largest economic opportunities.
Yet Alaska’s Legislature increasingly looks like a place where economic success shakes the tree, and the nuts rain down on us.
Alaska, apparently, would rather regulate itself into oblivion.
The tragic irony is that Alaska is already facing a looming natural gas shortage in Southcentral. Without new supply, the state could eventually be forced to import LNG at global market prices.
Imagine for a moment when you go to flip on your lights or heat your home in the dead of winter in a couple of years, remember that we sit on some of the largest untapped gas reserves in North America. Remember that we had a project ready to move forward. And remember that, at the moment of opportunity, our own Senate majority leader tried to stop it.
If SB 275 is truly the path forward, Alaska may soon become the only place in America committing death by Legislature.
And that’s something you really can’t make up.
Suzanne Downing is founder and editor of The Alaska Story and is a longtime Alaskan who was here before TAPS was built.
7 thoughts on “The nuts fall from the crazy tree, as Sen. Giessel tries to kill Alaska’s gasline”
Giessel may have a point.
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Simple answers to simple questions would have been helpful when the questions were asked the first time around.
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Yet no one on Team LNG seems to know, or be able to say, informally or under oath.
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1. How much will Alaskans’ heating bills increase following pipeline construction?
2. Will product be sold directly or indirectly to Communist China?
3. If supply problems arise, are Asian buyers prioritized over Alaskan customers?
4. Are Communist Chinese entities involved in project financing or insurance?
5. Is a plan in place if a Democrat-controlled administration revokes construction permits?
6. Recall Palin’s $500M giveaway to TransCanada, what prevents a similar giveaway from happening?
7. What assures pipeline-control gear will be CISA vetted? (https://www.cisa.gov/)
8. When LNG development is actually over, will AGDC go away?
9. What assures Alaskans and the Permanent Fund won’t be on the hook for up-front costs, contractor fraud, and losses if Glenfarne can’t get binding financial commitments from Asian companies and governments?
(https://ptop.substack.com/p/guide-to-uncovering-contractor-fraud?)
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On June 25, 2025, AGDC released an updated $38.7 billion cost estimate for the Alaska LNG Project.
(https://agdc.us/updated-38-7-billion-project-construction-cost/)
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Now Glenfarne wants $44 billion-plus.
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Then there’s this: “The latest evidence that no one knows what the gas will cost comes from an independent report by Rapidan Energy Group, which says the likely cost of the pipeline project is far higher than the $44 billion estimate still in circulation …Add in the cost of the so-called first phase—building a pipeline from the North Slope to Anchorage without compression and export facilities and the total project cost would exceed $70 billion.”
(https://www.dermotcole.com/reportingfromalaska/2025/6/24/glenfarnes-latest-deceptive-press-release-about-alaska-lng-project)
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Who’s on the hook when project cost runs up to, say, $90 billion, or reaches a point at which the thing doesn’t seem worth building because financial, geopolitical, legal, and physical risks outweigh benefits, making it unlikely to turn a profit during the lifetime of anyone alive today?
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Is Giessel acting out of concern for what the Rapidan analysis shows, which the Dunleavy administration, AGDC, and Glenfarne analyses apparently don’t show?
(https://www.rapidanenergy.com/about)
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Some Alaskans want answers because they reasonably fear that diving, eyes closed, into the deep end of what could turn out to be an empty pool won’t end well for them, they want to see the water for themselves, not have to take somebody’s word that it’s there.
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So, before lynching Giessel, might one respectfully request Team LNG’s head coach to answer the questions before committing us to the game …in which nothing seems to prevent their side from making up the rules as they go along?
A new pipeline would bring New families, new singles: New leaders. New leaders to challenge the weak leaders we do have up here who imitate to look stronger than they actually are.
The kind of leaders who’d make such Ak leaders as Sen Giessel look like a small town bully without the sophistication of leaders schooled in better schools and growing up in a more sophisticated life that creates leaders.
When the Alyeska Piprline was being built, it brought a multitude of new families and singles and leaders came out of it becoming leaders who did write the chapters of Alaska history because of being brought up to build a pipeline.
A new mega project would be good for Alaska not only for new leaders coming up here but also for the local homegrown men looking for something realistic for something to build.
I can’t stop thinking about cousin’s ex boyfriend was working at a Fred Meyer during the Biden Administration term because there wasn’t any mining job openings for him and the position he seemed. There are lots of homegrown Alaskan men like him, they are Waiting for the next big opportunity to build and hope to be building for a man’s lifetime.
From what I have heard, and to an extent seen, Ms. Giessel may have some significant mental health issues. Too many are afraid to speak about this and fear some kind of hostile response. Joe Biden was cognitively impaired as President and the consequences have been serious. It is time for some in Juneau to do the right thing and identify the Senator’s problems.
What are you trying to do, depopulate the legislature?
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That’s cra …maybe not such a bad idea.
Interesting that another site with Alaska in it’s name doesn’t seem to have any articles on SB275.
We’ve known for a long time that mom is unstable and has issues. Her psychiatrist told her to keep our of politics, as her issues are all about power and control. This is why I gave up citizenship.
I’ve been around her since day 1. She’s over the brink of insanity.