“I don’t think you’re going to get closer alignment between the different factions on this issue than you are going to get today.” - Rep. Calvin Schrage, I-Anchorage and chair of the conference committee tasked with creating a compromise gasline bill that ultimately failed.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy at a news conference in the Capitol on July 16, 2026. (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
By James Brooks and Corinne Smith
The Alaska House of Representatives on Thursday voted down a multibillion-dollar tax break for the proposed trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline project. Glenfarne LLC, the project’s lead developer, has said the tax break is necessary for it to obtain financing from banks and equity investors.
The Alaska Senate voted 11-8 to approve a compromise version of House Bill 381, which contains the tax break. But after that vote and as the House gaveled in, Dunleavy announced he would veto the bill if it were to pass.
The nameplate on Mustang Holding LLC's downtown Anchorage office is seen on July 16, 2026. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
By Yereth Rosen
Alaska regulators have assessed a $741,520 civil penalty against the operator of a small and trouble-plagued North Slope oil field for five months of unauthorized flaring of natural gas.
In Alaska, underground oil and gas fields are owned collectively by state residents. Wasting oil and gas without paying the state for it is equivalent to theft. Flaring — burning unused gas — is allowed for safety reasons and for early development of an oil or gas well, but only with state permission.
The Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, which is one of the largest immigrant detention facilities in the western U.S. (Grace Deng/Washington State Standard)
By Corinne Smith
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested an Alaska state attorney in Anchorage and is holding him in an ICE detention facility in Washington state, according to an agency spokesperson.
Shucheng Yang, a 32-year-old Chinese national, was arrested in Anchorage on July 10.
“Yang violated the terms of his admission and is a deportable alien,” said Jason Chudy, an ICE Public Affairs officer, by email on Thursday. He said Yang is currently detained in the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, pending immigration proceedings.
The entrance to the Alaska Gasline Development Corp.’s Anchorage office is seen on Aug. 11, 2023. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
COMMENTARY
By Warren Christian, Mike Chenault, Dennis Michel and Randy Eledge
When it comes to developing Alaska’s private-sector energy industry, certain members of Alaska’s Senate majority have misunderstood or misrepresented the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation’s plans. From our perspective, 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 in the name of protecting 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.
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