Energy & Mining

The Trump administration is reviving the hopes of the company behind the proposed Pebble Mine in southwest Alaska.

Vancouver, B.C.-based Northern Dynasty, the parent company of the Pebble Limited Partnership, says it’s in talks with the Environmental Protection Agency and hoping the agency will swiftly withdraw its veto of the project.

The proposed open-pit copper and gold mine would be upstream from Bristol Bay and is widely opposed in Dillingham and the region, where it is seen as a threat to the bay’s prolific salmon runs.

Environmental studies found it would damage or destroy miles of salmon streams and more than 2,000 acres of wetlands.

National sportfishing groups have also campaigned against the mine.

Northern Dynasty has a pending lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Anchorage to get a prior EPA veto of the project thrown out. A document filed in that case says the company and the agency are discussing a possible settlement and expect to reach an agreement by July 17.

In his first term, President Trump seemed to run hot and cold on Pebble. His first EPA administrator in 2017 let the project move forward, then reversed course a few months later. The mine proposal seemed to get back on track, but then the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied Pebble’s permit application in 2020.

That came after Donald Trump Jr., a sportfisherman who visited the region, publicly announced his opposition.

Alaska lawmakers plan to compel the administration of Gov. Mike Dunleavy to release data on oil taxes through a rare use of the state Legislature’s subpoena power.

It’s the latest development in a long-running dispute between the Legislature and Dunleavy administration over whether the state is getting all the tax revenue it should from its most lucrative natural resource.

Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, an Anchorage Democrat who chairs the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee, a joint House-Senate panel overseeing audits of state government, said subpoenas were the next logical step in completing an oil tax audit that’s been ongoing since 2020.

“We want to work with the Department of Revenue, period,” she said. “But the auditor has been trying to get this information for a very, very long time.”

Gray-Jackson’s committee unanimously authorized a $50,000 contract with outside attorneys to draft and send subpoenas to the administration to move the audit forward.

They’re looking for data that shows whether the Dunleavy administration has been properly enforcing the state’s oil tax laws. So far, the legislative auditor – the official the state Constitution puts in charge of examining the state’s books – hasn’t been able to get the data, at least, Gray-Jackson said, not in a format that the auditor can analyze.

“She’s trying to get the information she needs to complete her audit, but in the format … that’s understandable, in the format that has been done in the past,” Gray-Jackson said.

The most recent audit of that oil tax data was in 2018, and it showed that the Department of Revenue had raised $1.3 billion over six years by identifying underpayments from oil companies.

But more recently, the auditor told legislators at hearings this spring that the Department of Revenue has provided only raw data and contends that the department is not required to compile the data into a summary table similar to what state officials provided in 2018.

“That interpretation overturns longstanding precedent, and it essentially limits the oversight of the Legislature,” auditor Kris Curtis told lawmakers in May. “The fear is that state agencies from here on out will refuse to provide or compile data in any type of format for future legislative audits.”

In a letter to legislators earlier this year, Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum said his department’s Tax Division “has always been transparent” with the Division of Legislative Audit, the organization that the auditor leads, but said that compiling the data in the format requested by legislators would be time-consuming. Crum attached a 2020 letter from former Attorney General Kevin Clarkson outlining the state’s position that certain oil tax records are protected by attorney-client and other legal privileges.

Crum’s letter expressed “concerns” with Senate Bill 183, which would make it a crime for state officials not to provide data in the form or format requested by the legislative auditor.

“I think we’re dealing here with hundreds of millions and into the billions of dollars,” Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman said at a committee hearing earlier this year.

The bill ultimately passed by a wide margin, but Dunleavy vetoed it, saying it raised constitutional issues.

Whether the Legislature can override the veto is unclear — not least because Dunleavy called a special session for next month and told some lawmakers to stay away from the Capitol for the first few days to prevent the rest from overriding his vetoes.

Anchorage Democratic Sen. Bill Wielechowski said he thinks the governor’s request to skip the beginning of the session isn’t just about upholding Dunleavy’s veto of $50 million in education funding.

“This is all about protecting billions of dollars in taxes, likely tax evasion, to the oil industry, and it’s about benefiting the rich and the privileged at the expense of the rest of Alaskans,” Wielechowski said.

Dunleavy and legislators have traded barbs over the bill and the dispute behind it.

As the bill came to the governor’s desk in late May, the House speaker and Senate president sent a letter to Dunleavy saying Senate Bill 183 had been an “unfortunate but necessary response” to what they called a “persistent pattern of obstruction within the senior ranks of Alaska’s Department of Revenue.”

After vetoing the bill, Dunleavy fired back with a letter of his own, saying claims the administration was acting “illegally or unethically” were “unfounded and unsupported by any evidence.”

Dunleavy said he was open to working with the legislative auditor to get the data lawmakers seek.

Asked Tuesday when the data would be turned over, Dunleavy’s office said the governor’s letter and the revenue commissioner’s earlier statement to legislators were its only response.

Rep. Will Stapp, a Fairbanks Republican, said even if lawmakers get more insight into how the administration has handled oil taxes, there’s no certainty on whether that would result in a windfall for the state.

“It’s important that we audit the functions of our executive branch and especially our oil tax structure,” he said. “I would just be very skeptical that they owe us a billion dollars.”

Stapp said he’s planning to be in Juneau for the start of the special session next month, but he said he’s not convinced that the bill would make a difference in resolving the long-running dispute.

Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan says he’s pitching the Alaska LNG Project to the U.S. Department of Defense for potential investment. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Sullivan said bringing the federal government on to the project could “dramatically lower the cost of capital.”

“One of the things that we are doing right now with Glenfarne and the Department of Defense is trying to see if there’s a way in which the Department of Defense can be a buyer of gas that would come down through the pipeline,” he said.

Glenfarne is the private company that assumed majority ownership of the project earlier this year. A company spokesperson declined to say whether the company is pitching the project to the Pentagon.

If it’s built, the Alaska LNG Project would move natural gas from the North Slope to Southcentral for export. The long-sought project is estimated to cost $44 billion. President Donald Trump has shown interest, boosting hopes that it might finally attract investors.

The proposed pipeline route passes near Alaska’s largest military bases – Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage.

A spokesperson for the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, which owns the state’s 25% project stake, says the Fairbanks military bases could connect to the pipeline through a proposed project spur. JBER is already connected to the ENSTAR Natural Gas system, to which the project would be connected.

Sullivan says he’s already pitched the project to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and to Hegseth’s deputy, Steve Feinberg.

“The senior leaders of the Pentagon are very aware of this opportunity and that Glenfarne is quite interested in that,” Sullivan said.

And he says the project could benefit from the budget reconciliation bill moving through Congress.

Among other things, the bill would replace an existing federal loan program with a new one – the Energy Dominance Financing program. Sullivan says the bill puts about $1 billion toward it.

“I was on a conference call with Secretary Wright, and, you know, that’s the capitalization in the program,” he said. “He is very interested in looking at the AK LNG Project as one of the projects by which they would use this new energy dominance financing mechanism.”

Glenfarne, the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation and Gov. Mike Dunleavy have previously said they’ll seek financing from the private sector.

“Because of the amount of private sector capital, you really don’t need to rely on government capital, and that’s been made clear countless times,” Dunleavy told KDLL last month.

The project has existing federal loan guarantees approved under former President Joe Biden. Sullivan says the program was never set up under Biden, but that he’s renewing that push under Trump.

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The Regulatory Commission of Alaska approved Juneau Hydropower’s application to become an electric utility on June 11. The decision requires Alaska Electric Light and Power, previously Juneau’s sole electricity provider, to help connect the new utility to the grid. But Juneau Hydropower must finance and build its proposed hydroelectric project before its federal license expires, or the commission will revoke its approval.

The decision comes after more than a decade of equipment and ownership disputes between the new utility and AEL&P over what’s called ‘interconnection’ — the point where electricity from separately owned facilities joins to supply power through the same transmission line. The two companies will now have to work together to bring a new hydroelectric project online. The proposed project at Sweetheart Lake would grow Juneau’s renewable energy capacity by 19.8 megawatts. That’s enough to increase the borough’s hydroelectric capacity by nearly 20%.

AEL&P’s total hydroelectric capacity is 102 megawatts. The Snettisham Hydroelectric Plant operated by AEL&P currently supplies two-thirds of Juneau’s electricity and has a capacity of 78.2 megawatts.

Duff Mitchell, the managing director at Juneau Hydropower, says his project will increase energy security in Juneau in the event of a natural disaster. There was a two-month outage in 2008 when an avalanche hit multiple electric towers and took out about a mile of the Snettisham transmission line. Mitchell says the project will also help the city flourish.

“There’s going to be energy security for the future needs of Juneau, whether it be air-source heat pumps, electric cars, dock electrification or just growth and prosperity for Juneau,” Mitchell said.

The commission approved a service territory where Juneau Hydropower can deliver electricity that includes the stretch from Lena Point through Berners Bay. 

To shuttle power there, the company must build several pieces of infrastructure including a hydroelectric plant at Sweetheart Lake, a switchyard near Mist Island to connect Sweetheart with Juneau’s existing transmission line, and an additional transmission line from AEL&P’s Lena substation to the Kensington Mine more than 30 miles away. The company also plans to build a substation at Echo Ranch Bible Camp near Berners Bay to serve potential future customers and a battery energy storage system.  

But to complete the work, Juneau Hydropower needs money and has limited time. The commission made its approval conditional on both.

Juneau Hydropower has to file proof that it has secured enough funding for the project, which is estimated at about $265 million dollars, before it builds. Construction must begin by September 8, 2026, and finish three years later — deadlines that match the new utility’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license restrictions.

Mitchell says he’s moving as quickly as possible to make this happen. 

Financing Energy

The commission exempted the company from a requirement that a utility must serve 10 or more customers. So far, Juneau Hydropower’s only contracted customer is the Kensington Mine, which is projected to use 8.5 megawatts of electricity. The gold mine currently powers its operations with diesel.

Mitchell says that other potential customers have indicated a desire to receive electricity from Juneau Hydropower, including the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, Goldbelt Corporation, Grande Portage Resources, GreenSparc, Alaska Energy Metals Development Corporation, Alaska Communications and Rainforest Telecom.

But Mayor Beth Weldon says she is skeptical that Juneau Hydropower can build a reliable customer base. 

“I’ve said all along that they have to come up with year-round customers, and right now, we don’t have, other than Kensington, there’s no year-round customers,” Weldon said. 

Alec Mesdag is the CEO at AEL&P. He says that he doesn’t think Juneau Hydropower’s proposed project is financially viable.

“They have one customer versus our 18,000 customers,” he said. “So it’s an incredible burden to try to recover all of the revenue you need from one customer.” 

Juneau Hydropower proposes to pay for most of the hydropower project through federal and state loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), the public agency that owns Snettisham. The loans have not yet been approved. Mitchell says he will also rely on federal investment tax credits, which the company hasn’t earned yet. 

Those uncertainties prompted a comment from the commission. “We are concerned about JHI’s lack of loan approval,” the commission wrote in the decision. “However, it would not be just or reasonable for us to require JHI to have approved Sweetheart financing in order to be granted a certificate when JHI has been told it must have a certificate in order to get financing approval.”

Mitchell says he is confident that he will be able to secure funding by the September deadline. 

The Interconnection Point 

The point where new development at Sweetheart Lake will connect to the Snettisham transmission line, called the Mist Island switchyard, is where the largest disputes have erupted between AEL&P and Juneau Hydropower.

Last month, Mayor Weldon brought a resolution to the Juneau Assembly supporting AIDEA’s ownership of the switchyard. But the commission decided Juneau Hydropower is to own it, writing that AIDEA will instead own a motor-operated bypass switch so that power would still flow from Snettisham to AEL&P’s customers in the event of a catastrophic failure at the Mist Island switchyard. 

Still, Mesdag insists that the switchyard would be capable of interrupting power from Snettisham to Juneau in the event of a failure. 

Mesdag wrote in an email to KTOO that AEL&P is “deeply disappointed in the commission’s decision regarding interconnection, which sacrifices the security of Juneau’s most important generation resource to instead accommodate a small group of private investors that has never built, owned, operated or maintained electric generation or transmission infrastructure.” 

Juneau Hydropower is contracting with Ameresco, a company that builds energy infrastructure, and David Burlingame, an electrical engineer with companies based in Anchorage, to design, build and maintain the project. The commission wrote that relying on contractors doesn’t indicate a lack of technical expertise on Juneau Hydropower’s part. 

Juneau Hydropower must file interconnection and joint-use use agreements with the commission by June 25. AEL&P has until July 11 to appeal the decision.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration is threatening to strip a company of oil and gas leases in Cook Inlet outside Anchorage, saying it’s sitting on deposits that could delay an impending shortage of gas needed for heating and power generation in urban Alaska.

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources recently placed in “default” the Cosmopolitan Unit, a block leased by Texas-based BlueCrest Energy, saying it hasn’t met commitments to drill.

The company has held leases at Cosmopolitan for more than a decade. It conducted initial drilling several years ago but has not drilled any new wells since 2019, according to state records.

Company executives say that BlueCrest experienced a cash crunch when, amid a budget crisis beginning in 2014, the state of Alaska chose not to pay tax credits to oil firms that had spent money on drilling. BlueCrest has also had to ask Alaska’s economic development agency to approve delays in paying back a $30 million state loan.

The state’s new notice to BlueCrest, signed in May by Commissioner John Boyle, gives the company until Aug. 21 to show proof that it’s secured investment to drill a $55 million new oil well, as well as to advance development of a new offshore platform that would target natural gas.

That platform could cost $350 million or more, according to BlueCrest officials.

“We want to see aggressive, defined momentum towards putting our resources into active production,” Boyle said in an interview Thursday. “We need to see some drilling. We need to see some action.”

BlueCrest is negotiating with multiple companies about potential investment, Benjy Johnson, its chief executive, said in a phone interview.

“We’re hopeful that we’ll get it done,” he said. “I think we will.”

Johnson said he understands the state’s perspective, but added that defaulting BlueCrest’s leases is “not the solution to the problem.”

“The solution to the problem is helping us get funding to drill these wells, and to get the gas development going,” he said.

BlueCrest is one of the smaller companies active in the Cook Inlet basin, where the vast majority of the gas is produced by a large independent oil business, Hilcorp.

Hilcorp has warned urban Alaska’s heating and electric utilities that they shouldn’t expect Hilcorp to renew their gas supply contracts when they expire in the coming years.

In response, those utilities are advancing plans to import liquefied natural gas — but they also say that new local gas production could delay the need for imports. The supply crunch is serious enough that utilities and regulators have recently been discussing contingency plans for rolling blackouts.

BlueCrest says its leases contain large “proved reserves” of gas — an industry term meaning that a deposit’s flow has been tested and that an engineering firm has validated it can be produced with 90% probability or higher.

But building an offshore platform to access the gas would cost some $350 million.

One of the other small companies operating in Cook Inlet, HEX, has moved ahead with gas drilling in each of the past two years — with help from a decision by Dunleavy’s administration to reduce the royalty payments due from HEX to the state.

Boyle, the natural resources commissioner, described the royalty reduction as a “carrot.”

“But there’s also the potential for sticks, if we don’t see active movement on developing the rest of (HEX’s) leased acreage,” Boyle said. “And the same for BlueCrest and anyone else that we don’t feel is fulfilling their obligations.”

The state has a range of options if BlueCrest doesn’t advance its drilling program, Boyle said. In his notice to the company, he wrote that his agency could shrink BlueCrest’s Cosmopolitan Unit, or “terminate” it.

If the state takes back some of BlueCrest’s leased acreage, Boyle said, there are “definitely companies and entities that are willing to put money there to bring that gas to market.”

BlueCrest could also decide to sell its leases to another company, or find a business partner that could help advance development, according to Boyle.

BlueCrest and Hilcorp previously discussed a partnership to develop the Cosmopolitan Unit’s gas, Northern Journal reported in 2023. But the discussions broke down because the two companies couldn’t agree on how to divide potential costs and profits.

Nathaniel Herz welcomes tips at natherz@gmail.com or (907) 793-0312. This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Herz. Subscribe at this link.

Alaska hasn’t produced antimony — a shiny mineral used in weapons, flame retardants and solar panels — in almost 40 years.

That could change this summer, according to the executives of a Texas company that has snatched up more than 35,000 acres of mining claims in Alaska.

Dallas-based U.S. Antimony Corp. is looking to the state as a new source of antimony for its smelter in Montana, the only plant in the United States that refines the mineral.

Alaska’s antimony, the company says, could help the U.S. overcome a recent ban on exports of the mineral from China, the world’s top antimony producer. Antimony is among several minerals — many of which are used in renewable energy — that the U.S. has sourced primarily from China and other countries in recent decades. Efforts to build more mines in the U.S. have accelerated amid worsening trade tensions and growing demand.

With no active antimony mines, the U.S. in recent years has imported roughly 60% of its antimony from China. Meanwhile, need for the mineral has surged as antimony-laden arms flow to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

The price of the mineral has quadrupled in the past year, rising from around $13,000 to $55,000 per ton.

U.S. Antimony is now expanding its Montana smelter and rushing to find more ore to supply it. Alaska is its “primary focus” for boosting production, an executive said in an interview last week.

In the past eight months, a U.S. Antimony subsidiary, Great Land Minerals, has acquired claims in three different areas of Alaska’s Interior: outside Fairbanks; near the small town of Tok; and along the Maclaren River off the Denali Highway, a scenic road that runs outside the national park.

U.S. Antimony says it’s looking to truck antimony ore some 2,000 miles from Alaska to its processing plant in Montana. That operation could start as soon as September, executives said on a recent call with investors.

“We can’t get that antimony from Alaska to Montana fast enough,” Joe Bardswich, U.S. Antimony’s chief mining officer, said on the call.

The company’s plans coincide with a separate effort by an Australian company to start up its own small-scale antimony mine near Fairbanks.

Felix Gold is seeking to restart production this year at a long-shuttered antimony mine that sits within a few miles of a residential subdivision, Hattie Creek.

The company also is eyeing prospects near the hamlet of Ester on the outskirts of Fairbanks — where U.S. Antimony’s subsidiary has claims, too.

The potential developments are generating a mix of responses locally.

Some residents worry about environmental impacts of mining and its potential to transform tranquil Fairbanks-area neighborhoods into noisy industrial sites.

“I don’t want to be all NIMBY. But it literally is my backyard,” said Lisbet Norris, who lives in Hattie Creek, about 10 miles north of downtown Fairbanks. “It’s just so close.”

Norris, a dog musher, runs sled tours on trails that cross Felix Gold’s claims on state land, and she’s concerned that mining might impede her business. She’s also worried about heavy industrial use of the dirt road that connects her neighborhood — and Felix Gold’s potential operations — to the rest of town.

Other Fairbanks residents, however, say they support mining in the area; some cite the town’s early history as a gold mining town and the potential economic benefits of new mines.

“It’s because of mining that Fairbanks is what it is,” said Roger Burggraf, a local prospector who owns some of the claims that Felix Gold has leased to study the feasibility of antimony mining.

Burggraf said he understands the concerns of people who live near gold and antimony prospects. But when they bought their properties, “they should have realized that if a mine developed, that might change their lifestyle,” he added.

Felix Gold has a permit only for mineral exploration, not active mining.

The company aims later this year to apply for additional state permits, and to finish studying the profitability of developing a small antimony mine near the Hattie Creek subdivision.

U.S. Antimony also has applied only for a permit to search for antimony, though it hopes to apply for more permits and start mining within a year. If its exploration efforts show a mine would be profitable, it would propose an underground operation, said Rodney Blakestad, U.S. Antimony’s vice president of mining.

The footprint would be small, more similar to the family-run placer mines in the area than to a large-scale hardrock mine, according to Blakestad.

“We’re not Fort Knox,” he said, referring to Fairbanks’ huge open pit gold mine.

But before U.S. Antimony begins mining, it wants to buy antimony ore from existing placer gold mines.

Antimony often appears alongside more-valuable gold, and gold miners have typically thrown it aside.

Now that antimony prices are surging, though, U.S. Antimony representatives say every little bit is valuable. A 25-ton truck could carry some $600,000 worth of minerals, Bardswich said in an interview.

That means small loads of antimony ore from shallow, exploratory trenches that the company intends to dig at its Alaska prospects this summer also could be worth driving 2,000 miles to the Montana smelter, company executives said.

In the meantime, they intend to launch an advertising campaign to share their interest in buying the mineral from placer miners.

“People don’t realize this: Gold is not the best mineral to be mining, if you’re looking for really good value,” said Blakestad. “Antimony is.”

Northern Journal contributor Max Graham can be reached at max@northernjournal.com. He’s interested in any and all mining related stories, as well as introductory meetings with people in and around the industry.

This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Nathaniel Herz. Subscribe at this link.