By DAVE BRONSON and JOSHUA CHURCH
May 21, 2026 – Alaskans were promised progress on a gas line for decades.
Instead, we got studies, consultants, task forces, press conferences, political excuses, and legislative paralysis while energy prices continued rising and Alaska families continued paying the price.
At some point, we need to say the obvious: the political establishment failed.
More than 60% of Alaskans believe the state is on the wrong track because they can see what is happening around them. Young families are leaving. Housing costs are rising. Businesses struggle to expand. Communities are losing population. Meanwhile, one of the most resource rich places on earth cannot deliver affordable long term energy to its own people.
That is unacceptable.
The Legislature cannot continue governing as if there is unlimited time left to figure this out. Southcentral gas shortages are no longer some distant theoretical problem. Interior Alaska families have already spent years being crushed by some of the highest heating costs in America.
Alaska needs action.
The gas line should be treated as an economic survival project for the future of this state. Affordable and reliable energy impacts every part of Alaska’s economy:
Housing costs.
Utility costs.
Manufacturing.
Mining.
Military expansion.
Business investment.
Household affordability.
Population retention.
Virtually everything.
Without affordable energy, Alaska becomes increasingly unaffordable for working families and increasingly unattractive for investment.
The frustrating part is that Alaska has the resources. What we lack is political urgency and leadership willing to force projects across the finish line.
For years, politicians have delayed difficult decisions while the government continued growing, bureaucracy expanded, and opportunities slipped away.
Alaskans are tired of it.
This state was built by people willing to think big, work hard, and build infrastructure that future generations could benefit from. Alaska did not become successful because previous generations were afraid to act.
We need leadership willing to fight for development again.
Fight for affordable energy again.
Fight for economic growth again.
Fight for Alaska families again.
The gas line is not just another project anymore.
It is a test of whether Alaska still has the ability to build major things at all. It’s a test of whether families will continue for generations here or move.
Alaska’s future depends on the answer.
8 thoughts on “Dave Bronson: Alaska cannot survive another decade of excuses”
Dave, talk of a gasoline was common starting back in 1976, before the TAPS was even completed. The theme at the time was to build another 48 inch line along side the oil pipeline, using the same right of way. That was 50 years ago.
But the markets didn’t support a gas line. And they still don’t today. Gas, being a plentiful and fungible commodity, is available all over the world. You need buyers who are willing to enter long-term contracts. At the price of between 50 and 90 $$billion to build an Alaska gas line, including liquification and regasification plants, the economics just doesn’t work out. Added to that, is the constant bickering of how Alaska is going to take its “fair share” in revenues…..volumetric tax or property tax. Alaskans are terribly misinformed about this. And the Legislature, with all of its small-brained leaders, will only kill a prospective deal.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a gas pipeline in Alaska will be debated and delayed for another 20 to 50 years.
But I’m still voting for you.
“……….a gas pipeline in Alaska will be debated and delayed for another 20 to 50 years………..”
And Southcentral will run out of Cook Inlet gas in a fraction of that 20 to 50 years. Hilcorp has already served notice that there will be no further investment in the field by them. So your theory of “gas being a plentiful and fungible commodity” will be put to the test very soon. If Enstar can’t provide delivered gas at the current residential rate of 12.92 with a long-term LNG purchase, delivery, and re-gasification contract, you will have been wrong.
And late.
You might want to get your saw and splitting maul ready. There is a lot of folks around this world currently scrambling to gain access to that “plentiful and fungible commodity” right now……………….
@Reggie Taylor:
And your proof is?…….who are those buyers? You can’t force a sale on anyone, Reggie. ……unless you are Don Corleone.
Gas is abundantly available around the world. Alaska gas is not unique to the world. All of the past and present would-be suppliers, and pipeline builders will tell you that no gas line gets built until BIG $$$ gets ponied-up. Todate, its all talk. Energy isn’t the topic; taxes and royalties are the topics. The cart before the horse. Count the money in the bank before a shovelful of dirt is overturned.
But I do agree with you about lost opportunities and Cook Inlet running out. But that’s not the problem for prospective buyers of gas. That’s an Alaska problem. We have $90 billion in our PF and the legislators won’t even cut out a statutory PFD to offset the high fuel oil costs for Alaskan residents.
In the event of a real energy emergency for Alaskans, we can blame it on dimwitted legislators. Meanwhile, start cutting down the forests and cure the firewood. We may have to cook our steaks on open fires and go back to wood stoves.
Cheers,
Rick
“……..Gas is abundantly available around the world…………”
The problem isn’t the scarcity of gas, as our own situation proves. The problem is getting it to the customer. We’re quite literally sitting on enough gas to last us hundreds of years. Yet here we are, each winter suffering a loss of pressure so significant as to fail to start emergency generators if temps are at 0 or colder. Europe is facing a crisis due to the loss of Russian gas. Twenty percent of the planet’s LNG is currently sitting in the Persian Gulf afraid to attempt passage through the Strait of Hormuz. And none of that is new; OPEC literally paved the path of the TAPS oil pipeline with their oil embargoes of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. As I type this, construction has begun on the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline which will deliver natural gas for liquifying at Prince Rupert in BC. How did the Canadians do it and we could not? Is somebody getting long term purchase contracts for us? Who would do such a thing with our own pipeline proposals sitting on the table needing only a couple more votes in the Legislature and a signature from the Governor?
We’re hostage to this game like never before. Yeah, it’s definitely time to stack up a few cords of wood. Last winter was a doozy, and it looks like it’s running right on through the summer months to next fall.
We’ve most likely missed our window of opportunity on this project. Similar (competing) projects in TX & LA are easily being sanctioned and government approvals are easily obtained. I’d say we’ve been outsmarted – outclassed, but that’s would imply our elected leadership had an element of smarts and/or class. As we all know, our elected leadership has neither!
Very likely the outcome was orchestrated not because of in-fighting, but a way to disguise the TRUE intent: the Democratic Party is anti-human. Not only against unborn children, but against you and me. In their eyes, people are the enemy. We pollute the world simply by our existence. Stop fossil fuels. Demonize coal. Promote ruinously expensive and impractical “alternatives” such as wind and solar. Halt hydro-power, which actually works. And they want to STARVE us to death by saving us from livestock, or forcing Euro farmers to become criminals because of their carbon footprint. They get assisted suicide and euthanasia easy to utilize. The political leaders are lemmings, leading themselves and us into a satanic abyss. Alaska is bought-and-paid for, regardless of which party appears to be in control. The billionaires figured out how easy it is to propagandize a supposedly frontier state where most of the people are actually urban dwellers. SE is merely a distant suburb of Seattle and the villages are already predictably Left.
Bob, you are the greatest cynisist. But not wrong either. I think the larger picture is that the environmental nut jobs, being pumped out of colleges and brainwashed at the grade school level, are the real problem. They hate carbon-based fuels. That’s what they were taught and that’s what they know. The greatest fraud and hoax on our world is man-made climate change. Instead,
start teaching them that natural gas leaves a footprint on our planet smaller than a fart. And a pipeline right of way will give them new hiking opportunities. And they can drive around in natural gas vehicles. That’s how you do it. Otherwise, you are pissing upwind. The environmentalists will make sure that the federal and state permitting process, coupled with dozens of lawsuits, and tripled with right of way access problems, will hold up a pipeline project for decades. Not even DJT and a Republican Congress will be able to speed it up. Joe Biden killed the scheduled pipeline in Canada. And he doesn’t even know he did it. That’s where we are at today.
With respect, Dave, here’s what Alaska can’t “survive”: (a) more of what looks and smells like the TransCanada debacle on steroids, (b) the obsession with giving a blank check to Glenfarme just so we can “survive””, and (c) doom-and-gloomers, your esteemed self among them, using “survival” and “gas line” in the same sentence.
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If Glenfarme’s too cheap to hire lobbyists like everybody else, they just call Cheerleaders R Us and you come running?
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You do remember the TransCanada debacle?
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You do recall China Bill Walker’s heroic effort to suck us into a Chinese Belt and Road debt trap?
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More of the same is our only way to “survive”? What’s different this time?
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You’re damned right, “Alaska’s future depends on the answer”.
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So, why not answer the questions we asked yet again at “Secretary of Interior Burgum calls out the Legislature”?
(https://thealaskastory.com/secretary-of-interior-burgum-calls-out-the-legislature/)
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And how about a word on why Alaska’s “survival” should depend on doing business with a company that operates as described in: “A quick tour around the network of Glenfarne, the company agreeing to build Alaska LNG project”.
(https://mustreadalaska.com/a-quick-tour-around-the-network-of-glenfarne-the-company-agreeing-to-build-alaska-lng-project/).
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The quick-tour piece came out just over a year ago, Dave. Remind again what you said about Glenfarme after reading it back then? Oh, nothing? But now you’re their chief cheerleader? Bad optics, Governor Dave.
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We’re not pro or anti- gas line, Dave. We’re anti-BS and, at this moment, yours is just another smelly heap on the steaming pile streaming our way.
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You want to be governor, show leadership, ditch your damned lectures, answer our questions, help us figure out what the hell is going on so we can either get on side or help tear down what’s looking like the Mother of All Permanent Fund Feeding Frenzies.
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“Survive”? May we suggest candidly that our “survival” depends on you, Wilson, and DeVries, not on a money-gobbling planetary oligarchy. One of you is elected, teams up with the other two and their running mates. With that level of integrity and intelligence running the show, we might “survive”.
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Now, how about those answers, Dave?