Within hours of returning to the country’s highest office Monday, President Donald Trump formalized his support for the $44 billion Alaska LNG Project.
Support for natural resource development in Alaska as the official policy of the United States was tucked into the flurry of executive orders Trump signed on his first day. According to Trump, that means prioritizing development of LNG for sale and transport to other parts of the country and its Pacific allies – including via the Alaska LNG Project.
If it’s built, the Alaska LNG Project would move natural gas from the North Slope to Southcentral through an 800-mile pipeline. The gas would be liquefied at a facility in Nikiski and then shipped overseas.
The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation is the state agency overseeing the project. In a statement Monday, corporation president Frank Richards said he looks forward to working with the president on the project.
But environmental groups and some state lawmakers expressed skepticism about Trump’s energy agenda and the project’s future as the legislative session kicked off Tuesday in Juneau.
Anchorage Republican state Sen. Cathy Giessel criticized a $50 million backstop Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, or AIDEA, OK’d for a company to update the project’s 10-year-old engineering and design work. The money was included in the governor’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
“We’re offering now a completely risk-free $50 million to a company,” she said. “We don’t know what the product is going to be and if it’s a nothing product, we are still paying $50 million. I question whether it was AIDEA’s authority to take the $50 million they actually owed us as a dividend and appropriate it for this.”
Bethel Democrat Sen. Lyman Hoffman co-chairs the Senate Finance Committee. He says energy is a priority this session, but called AIDEA’s backstop a “bad precedent.”
“The question has to be asked, ‘Will the federal government come up and pony up to assist – and to what level – in the construction of this gasline?” he said. “The President wants to develop Alaska resources, and to what level and to what extent will that be, for a gasline?”
Giessel says lawmakers are scheduled to take up a variety of energy issues during the first meeting of the Senate Resources Committee on Wednesday. According to the committee’s agenda, lawmakers will hear from representatives of Hilcorp Alaska and HEX/Furie.
Copyright 2025 KDLL