By MARY VOUGHT
June 25, 2026 – After 50 years of waiting, Alaska finally had a private company willing to build its natural gas pipeline. Glenfarne came forward with a real commitment. This year, for the first time, the pieces were genuinely in place. Then the state Senate came close to ending it in one night. This is how Alaska’s biggest opportunities tend to die.
House Bill 381 was the vehicle for making it happen. It was a narrowly focused piece of legislation designed to address a property tax structure that would have buried the project in costs before it produced a dollar of revenue. The House grasped the stakes. 34 members voted for a clean bill with broad bipartisan support and sent it to the Senate. The Senate’s response was to load that bill with a new corporate income tax that Glenfarne says will end the project.
The Alaska Landmine, which has covered this fight as closely as any outlet in the state and done terrific work, made the case early that the greatest risk to this project “has always been clear: the Alaska State Legislature.” The Senate just proved the point.
Glenfarne, which has invested years and significant capital in this project, issued a statement after the Senate vote, making clear the project could not be financed or built under those conditions. Alaska has no second option and no other developer waiting to step in. That is not a negotiating position. That is a warning.
The income tax the Senate added specifically targets S corporations, which are privately held companies, in a single industry. The IRS has no framework for this. That means the Alaska Department of Revenue would be writing rules from scratch while investors in a $44 to $55 billion project wait for certainty that may never come. Alaska would be charting legal territory that does not exist anywhere else and asking private capital to follow. No other state has ever singled out one industry and applied a targeted entity-level income tax to its S corporations. Alaska would be doing something that has never been done anywhere in American law.
This does not stop with Glenfarne. The provision sets a dangerous precedent. The language could be expanded to apply to any pass-through business in Alaska by changing only a few words. The framework would be in place, and a new income tax could be implemented on a doctor’s office in Anchorage or a bakery in Fairbanks at a moment’s notice. Alaskans should see this for what it is: an attack on Alaskan entrepreneurs.
Cook Inlet gas, which heats homes across Southcentral Alaska, is declining and getting more expensive by the year. Families in Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Valley are already watching their utility bills climb. A pipeline at full capacity could cut what Southcentral families pay for gas by half. For a family trying to get through an Alaska winter, that is not a policy footnote. It is the difference between getting through the month and not.
The senators who attached this tax to HB 381 would say they were protecting Alaska’s fiscal interests. What they were doing was betting the project. A lower tax on a pipeline that gets built generates real revenue, jobs, and affordable energy for Alaskans. A higher tax on one that never gets built generates nothing. Glenfarne was not posturing when they said the deal cannot close under these terms. This is a company that has to take a financing package from lenders. When they say the terms are unworkable, they mean it.
Strip the income tax provisions from the bill entirely. Restore the framework that the House passed with such strong support. Give Glenfarne the terms it can actually take to its financing partners. Alaska families have waited more than half a century for affordable energy and the economic future this pipeline would deliver. They should not have to keep waiting because their senators chose a political fight over a project that would actually work.
Mary Vought, a former senior Senate advisor, is an Alaskan currently residing in Washington, D.C.
12 thoughts on “Mary Vought: Alaska is gambling with a pipeline that would change everything for families”
Alaska needs to know the actual costs and the overseas buyers. Glenfarne won’t release that information. Taints the trust they are asking of us.
How lazy are you really, Evan? The worldwide and regional rates for natural gas sales are public. Why not start with those and see where they lead? Cheers –
No, meant the cost to build the thing, not current rates for natural gas. Sorry I was not clear
Find another excuse for your opposition, Evan. You’re way late to reality…………again:
https://alaskapublic.org/news/politics/alaska-legislature/2026-06-04/glenfarne-releases-alaska-lng-cost-estimates-as-skeptical-legislators-press-for-details
Admit it: you oppose the pipeline for reasons you don’t even understand. You’re following the sound of a flute right over the cliff.
ESTIMATED costs Reggie and the range is $44 billion to $54 billion. That’s a ten billion dollar difference. A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there; pretty soon it’s going to add up to real money.
It’ll also change the political leadership over our communities too
It’ll bring new leaders and new political influencers to the North because of work
As well as for those Alaskan-born who are just struggling in life. the pipeline may give those Alaskans the work incentive (something to work for) to get training so they can cash in too working on the pipeline
They r the most incompetent legislature in state history need to pack them up and send them home vote them all out of office.
You know this pipeline has two sets of information: the one sold by the media and Juneau, and the one you can put together by watching committee hearings, reading legislation, and the many articles written on energy. But where legislation is concerned, you would have to read all the legislation related to energy and money since Dunleavy has been in office, because his handlers have been incrementally pushing this since the Dunleavy recall. I will just go ahead and say it was him being put on notice by his handlers: “We can pull you as fast as we inserted you.”
If you will, this pipeline is a disaster. Unfortunately, the sausage-making machine of this damaged republic did what it normally does: it turned a great idea into a machine that transfers taxpayer dollars to foreign banks and keeps the state grift machine fed and healthy so it can continue to grow at the extreme expense of the Alaskan citizen, despite population reduction over the last 14 years.
How very, very sad this whole thing has become—not just the pipeline grift, but the gaslighting and the lies. The carbon-control grift machine is running alongside it, trying to emerge and create a hydrogen economy that no one wants except manufacturers that aren’t willing to pay for it unless they can use taxpayer money, leaving less for services and more debt for the citizen, with a diminished way of life at a higher price.
Yikes. Throw all that in a pot, mix it around, and all you get is a damn American mess.
Tax the potential for everyone to prosper before any real possibility of success.
It took several hundred years and cost many soldiers lives but Democrats have finally succeeded in doing what all those soldiers died for…..independence from taxation without true and honest representation.
Andy, is it OK if I use your comment as an example of a fallacy in my Logic course?
there is a CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER and I mean that!
the danger we in Alaska face is a loss of the gas grid, if you are not aware it almost happened winter before last.
a loss of supply will effectively shut down all heating and electrical for most of Alaskans, some small fraction will be able to sustain for a while but the cost will be high running on oil. most others with natural gas heat and no real back up system will be most in jeopardy. no lights and no heat 10-30 below you figure it out.
And those taxes they talk about guess who pays them, the the business or corporation pass it on to the consumer.
that would be you and me
“……..the danger we in Alaska face is a loss of the gas grid, if you are not aware it almost happened winter before last……….”
Yup. We had an electrical outage during below zero cold two winters ago, and my neighbor’s brand, spanking new automatic natural gas fired generator refused to start. They stayed in the dark while we hummed along with our gasoline fired generator. What did the repairman say? The gas grid pressure was so low, it wasn’t high enough to start the generator.
The danger is real, and it’s already here. A few state senators will screw the solution up for generations, if not forever. Then, after collapse, they’ll just move back to Seattle or San Francisco.