By WARREN CHRISTIAN, MIKE CHENAULT, DENNIS MICHEL & RANDY ELEDGE
July 13, 2026 – When it comes to developing Alaska’s private-sector energy industry, certain members of Alaska’s Senate Majority have maintained a highly creative relationship with the truth. Recent commentary defending the Senate’s rewrite of the gas line tax bill passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of the Alaska House is a masterclass in political gaslighting. Let’s be clear about what is actually happening: members of the Senate and their “leave it in the ground” environmentalist backers are trying to choke the life out of the Alaska LNG Project while pretending to protect Alaskans.
By wrapping layers of economically unviable mandates in the flag of “protecting Alaskans,” Senators in the majority successfully injected “poison pills” into legislation that was meant to enable the largest infrastructure project in state history.
Moving the Goalposts on Private Investment
They claim that Glenfarne doesn’t need legislation to build the project. This betrays a fundamental ignorance—or deliberate misrepresentation—of how mega-project financing works. International investors do not commit tens of billions of dollars to a state with a volatile fiscal regime without long-term tax certainty.
What the Senate actually did was take a predictable tax framework and append unnecessary and arbitrary penalties, micromanaged timelines, and aggressive corporate restructuring demands to it. No private entity can secure global financing when a state government mandates statutory completion deadlines under threat of asset forfeiture. By demanding a final investment decision on a rigid, state-imposed timeline, the Senate didn’t protect Alaskans; they created a framework designed to ensure the project fails before it starts.
The S-Corporation Bait-and-Switch
The centerpiece of their defense is their sudden crusade on the back of Alaska LNG to close the “S-corporation loophole,” driven by a jaw-dropping misrepresentation of basic accounting. They claim that Glenfarne will make “$5 billion in profits per year.” This is flatly untrue, and the Senators know it. They are deliberately muddling gross project revenues with net corporate profits.
To generate those revenues, Glenfarne and its partners must first service the debt on an estimated $54 billion construction bill, coverpipeline operating costs, and pay upstream producers for the actual gas. To tell Alaskans that a developer is pocketing $5 billion in pure, untaxed profit when they haven’t even cleared the hurdle of paying off their initial investment is economic illiteracy at best, and intentional deception at worst.
Using a targeted infrastructure bill to wage an ideological war on major producers like Hilcorp—the very company keeping Southcentral Alaska warm right now—is a reckless gamble with our energy security. Senate Democrats and their anti-industry allies see the need for Alaska LNG as a vehicle to open Pandora’s Box for an ever-expanding web of personal income tax in Alaska.
Weaponizing Good Intentions
The Senate rhetoric surrounding Alaska hire and a $5 natural gas cap follows the exact same playbook: take a universally popular concept and weaponize it into unworkable statutory mandates. Glenfarne and Alaska’s Building Trade unions already voluntarily signed a binding historic memorandum of understanding for a project labor agreement with Alaska trade unions. The market was already aligned to protect local workers. By twisting market-driven solutions into rigid statutory pretzels, the Senators aren’t helping labor—they are killing the very project that would provide thousands of union jobs. The same goes for the $5 gas cap. Dictating market prices in state law is an absolute non-starter for private capital.
The Reality: You cannot tax, mandate, and regulate a project into existence. If the economics don’t work, the gas stays in the ground—which is precisely what the Senators’ most vocal supporters want. Alaskans need to look past the populist theater. We face a looming energy crunch in Southcentral Alaska. We need real solutions, private capital, and reliable partners. What we do not need are partisan politicians treating a multi-billion dollar lifeline for our state as a political football. The Senate’s bill didn’t ask Glenfarne to keep its promises. It would force Glenfarne to accept terms that make the project completely unbankable. They know this. They are counting on Alaskans not understanding the complexities of project finance so they can blame the developer when the project collapses.
It’s time to call this strategy what it is: a coordinated effort to kill Alaska energy under the guise of defending it.
Warren Christian is chairman of the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation Board of Directors. Mike Chenault is vice chair, Dennis Michel is secretary/treasurer, and Randy Eledge is a director.
11 thoughts on “The art of the poison pill: How the Alaska Senate is killing Alaska’s energy future”
Does the Alaska Senate use separate water refill stations? There’s something in the water.
This doesn’t just affect energy. It hurts the states reputation as regards business in general. Who will want to spend their time, money or effort to start or move their ventures to s place that is dead set against anyone other than a connected few making ant money there. Its the same,reason that you don’t invest in North Korea. Even if you manage to get something going, the government will come along and steal( expropriate) it, perhaps even decide that you have broken some arbitrary law, and even imprison you .real banana,republic stuff .these folks must love killing the economy, while expecting more tax revenues from the decaying bones of that golden goose
The ‘ripple-effects’ are vast and significant, if these Senator’s black-pilling efforts derails the project!
… Zero chance at new revenue streams
… Zero chance at both GDP & Job Growth
… Zero chance at increasing economic growth
… Zero chance at mitigating the depletion of Cook Inlet gas supply
… Zero chance at reducing the energy costs for Alaskans
… Zero chance at supplying much needed gas to high-demand customers in: Anchorage, Fairbanks, Donlin Gold
These rogue Senators need to be held accountable for their transgressions, as their self-serving narcissism certainly doesn’t serve the interests of Alaska and/or Alaskans.
The faces of criminals. Essentially robbing from our state and from those who work and live here. Clueless, pandering to their own deluded self interests or those of whomever is benefitting them, Despicable.
There is a lot more to it than economics. Those nasty senators hate Mike Dunleavy. They don’t want Mike Dunleavy getting ANY credit for the start of construction of a gasline before he leaves office this year. They would rather wait and revive the issue under Bill Walker, or another Democrat fool and give him/her the credit. But not a conservative Republican.
We know the “art of the poison pill” is more a layer of payoffs to the dissenters or other such form of corruption. Proving that, and exacting legal consequence is made impossible for 2 reasons:
1) the judiciary and legal systems we allowed them to build
2)the legions of sofa sitters who read nothing, care for nothing but their own minutia, therefore do nothing.
Beyond that, the Elites construction of the American Sports Machine is well into its 75th year doing it’s job, with the overarching goal to cement in our culture that men playing games is a legit job for a MAN. Laughing all the way to the bank, as they knew putting men in uniforms with outrageous pay, Americans would think its a something. Then selling us “food” they once spent millions to dispose of: who knew 300M tons of blood and viscera from beef slaughter would become “hotdogs”, flour products so unfit for human consumption it had to be “Enriched” with synthetic vitamins, moldy corn unfit for pigs became popcorn with fake butter made from seed oil used for machinery…
Don’t worry, the surveillance of our every word, text, and website by the ubiquitous cellphone will let TPTB know if anyone gets off the sofa…
Photo Caption: The most un-Alaskan collection of scum that this State has ever come up with. Not a Statesman in the bunch.
None of those in the picture disapproved how Governor Walker or who was to build the gasline. None of those disapprove the building of a Gas pipeline. They just disapprove who is building it because it isn’t China…
The Un-Americans are holding out for a China company.
The Ministry of State Stupidity has spoken.
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You boys popped poison pills when you joined the Glenfarme Glee Club who don’t represent us, and lobbed grenades at the Senate who do represent us.
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You boys can’t answer questions from people who got sucked into a 25% stake of your Best Thing Ever, but with Madam Editor’s permission, we’ll try again:
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1. How much will Alaskans’ heating and electric bills increase after pipeline construction?
2. Will product be sold directly or indirectly to Communist China?
3. If supply or demand issues arise, are Asian buyers prioritized over Alaskan customers?
4. Are Communist Chinese entities involved in project financing, insurance, or construction?
5. Are contingency plans in place to assure political or labor instability don’t disrupt the project?
6. Recall Governor Palin’s $500M giveaway to TransCanada, what protects taxpayers from a similar giveaway or debt trap?
7. What assures pipeline-control gear will be CISA vetted? (https://www.cisa.gov/)
8. When LNG development is actually over, will AGDC be disbanded?
9. What assures Alaskans and the Permanent Fund won’t be liable for up-front costs, contractor fraud, and losses if Glenfarne can’t get, or later loses, binding financial commitments from Asian companies and governments?
(https://ptop.substack.com/p/guide-to-uncovering-contractor-fraud?)
10. What makes Polar LNG -not- better positioned to move natural gas by leveraging existing Prudhoe Bay infrastructure, minimizing new onshore development, and delivering a more efficient and lower-impact path to market …at a quarter of the cost?
(https://polarlng.com/project/)
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11. 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 $44B plus.
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Then there’s this, also from a year ago: “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 $70B.”
(https://www.dermotcole.com/reportingfromalaska/2025/6/24/glenfarnes-latest-deceptive-press-release-about-alaska-lng-project)
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Who pays when project cost runs up to, say, $90B, or reaches a point at which it’s not cost effective anymore because financial, geopolitical, legal, and physical risks outweigh benefits, making it unlikely to turn a profit during the lifetime of anyone alive today? What is that stop point?
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12. Are Alaskans right to be concerned about 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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13. Are legislators wrong to tax to the max natural gas taken from Alaska and sold to communist China, and use the revenue for individual property-tax reductions and full PFD’s?
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14. What protects Alaskans from Glenfarme using Alaska, with its 25% stake in the project, (a) as a cash cow to cover cost overruns and rate increases, (b) as hostage to pay for overruns and increases already baked into “increased” project cost, and (c) using the Senate as a scapegoat to be conveniently blamed if “increased” project cost turns out to be problematic?
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15. What proves beyond doubt that (a) Cook Inlet gas reserves are bouncing on empty, and therefore (b) other practical, viable, -less expensive- options to Glenfarme’s project are unworkable, shouldn’t be discussed, much less be allowed to happen?
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16. What proves Glenfarme’s apparent promise of price controls on customer rates is a promise Glenfarme and government can keep?
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Their promise seems disturbingly amnesic. Remember how price controls affected supply during the 1970’s oil crisis? They’re saying more of the same’s coming?
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Does this ring a bell, something different’s happening now? “We economists don’t know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can’t sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you’ll have a tomato shortage. It’s the same with oil or gas.”
(“Friedman Blames Mess on Federal ‘Helpers’,” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1977)
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17. What protects Alaskans from corporate lowballing, setting domestic prices artificially, temporarily low to discourage popular support for, and investment in, the other three alternatives to Glenfarme’s gas line?
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18. Was it just a coincidence that the lobbyist whose job, according to the “Alaska Lobbyist Directory”, is helping out with “All legislation and administrative action relating to taxation of resource industries in Alaska” …helped out with getting taxpayer-subsidized housing for legislators who, coincidentally, write the taxes on resource industries in Alaska?
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“Reed Stoops, a lobbyist, is a member of the board of the Juneau Community Foundation and helped organize the latest housing donation. The ultimate goal is to give the Legislature more housing options to keep legislative sessions in Juneau, ‘especially during a special session like this,’ he said.”
(https://alaskabeacon.com/briefs/nonprofit-foundation-gifts-alaska-legislature-16-apartments-in-juneau/)
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19. What parts of Roger Marks’ “Build the Line is a pressure campaign designed to amass power” article in ADN are wrong?
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Marks begins with: ‘The “Build the Line” marketing craze currently sweeping Alaska, as a way to pressure legislators into passing the tax relief, aims to conflate reducing taxes with actual construction of the project. The proper response should be, “Build it with what?'”
(“Anchorage Daily News”, July 11, 2026, https://www.adn.com/opinions/2026/07/11/opinion-build-the-line-is-a-pressure-campaign-designed-to-amass-power/)
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Is Marks wrong?
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Any investor in high-end things like gas pipelines, would be expected to ask these questions, and get factual, verifiable answers before investing.
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We’re investors, entitled to factual, verifiable answers before investing. But all we get is crap like yours! Alaska’s Democrats have to hit the brakes on this damned thing until Alaska’s non-Democrats can figure out what’s really happening?
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So do something worthwhile for once in your lives: answer our questions like you took oaths to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God, and maybe we’ll let you keep your Glenfarme cheerleaders’ outfits.
Herd them onto a cruise ship for a oneway trip to California where they will fit in with all their misfits.
They are not Alaskans.
Senator Wielechowski’s claim that Glenfarne will make $5 Billion a year in profit is more Big government left lib spin BS & Billy knows it:
No, claims that Glenfarne will pocket $5 billion a year in net profit on the Alaska LNG project are highly misleading.The assertion stems from a deliberate confusion between gross revenues and net corporate profits. The financial realities of the Alaska LNG project demonstrate why this figure is inaccurate:
Debt Service: Before any net profits are realized, Glenfarne and its partners must service the debt on an estimated $44.5 billion to $54.5 billion construction bill.
Operating Costs: The company must cover immense ongoing operational and maintenance costs for the 800-plus-mile pipeline and export infrastructure.
Gas Payments: The developer must also pay upstream producers (such as Hilcorp) to purchase the natural gas before it is transported and exported.