The art of the poison pill: How the Alaska Senate is killing Alaska’s energy future

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.

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