Category: Alaska News

Alaska and three of its municipalities could be in line for an extra $60 million in oil industry tax revenue after a new ruling in a long-running feud over the value of the trans-Alaska pipeline system.

A state appeals board this week determined the property tax value of the enormous 50-year-old pipeline system, which moves crude 800 miles from the North Slope’s oil fields to the port town of Valdez, to be $13 billion.

That’s some $3 billion more than an initial 2026 assessment from Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration — meaning the pipeline’s owners would owe $60 million more under the state’s 2% property tax regime.

Far more money could be at stake if, as anticipated, the oil companies that own the pipeline and pay the taxes — or the municipalities that collect a share of the taxes — appeal the decision in state court.

A spokesperson for Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., which operates the pipeline system, said the decision is under review by the owners. Alyeska is owned by affiliates of three of Alaska’s major oil producers: Hilcorp, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil.

Robin Brena, an Alaska attorney who has long represented the municipalities in pipeline property tax matters, said he expects both parties to appeal the decision.

The dispute dates back decades. Alyeska and the municipalities spent years in court feuding over yearly assessments before reaching a settlement in 2016 that set the pipeline’s value at $8 billion — translating into an annual property tax bill of $160 million.

That money flows to both the state and municipalities; for Valdez, the taxes have represented more than half of the city’s regular recurring revenue. The North Slope and Fairbanks North Star boroughs also receive tens of millions of dollars.

After the settlement expired last year, the state Department of Revenue initially set the pipeline system’s updated value at $10.3 billion.

Both the oil companies and municipalities appealed to the State Assessment Review Board, whose five members are appointed by the governor.

The owners assert that the pipeline system’s value has been declining and is now $2.8 billion — equating to some $56 million in property tax payments.

The municipalities, meanwhile, say the system is depreciating at a much slower rate and still has decades of life left in it, buoyed by new oil development on the North Slope. They estimate that its value is closer to $20 billion, which would translate to some $400 million in property tax revenue.

Brena, the lawyer representing the municipalities, said he’s skeptical of the oil companies’ approach.

“To me, the owners are advocating a position which has consistently been about 10% percent of the true value of TAPS,” he said, using the acronym for the pipeline system. “It looks like their motives are to lower their taxes rather than to get the assessment correct.”

The Department of Revenue’s 2026 assessment was based on a court-approved method of estimating the cost of replacing the pipeline, then accounting for depreciation.

The state review board concluded that the revenue department used an improper method to calculate depreciation — focusing on past North Slope production rather than on proven oil reserves and expected future production.

The municipalities and oil companies have 30 days from May 22 to appeal the board’s decision to Alaska superior court. Similar pipeline tax cases before the 2016 settlement were appealed all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court.

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.

The Alaska Legislature approved a package of legislation aimed at improving the state’s coordination and emergency medical services response for strokes and heart attacks, including prompting school districts to offer CPR training for all Alaska students. 

Noting Alaska’s unique challenges with geography, transportation and emergency services resources, the bill’s sponsor Rep. Genevieve Mina, D-Anchorage, said the goal of the legislation is to streamline responses to intervene in what’s known as the “golden hour” — the 60 minutes following a traumatic injury or medical event — particularly for strokes and heart attacks.

“The issue is that in Alaska, we do not have a system of care for these time-sensitive emergencies for strokes and heart attacks,” Mina told senators at a May 7 hearing.

Lawmakers approved the package, which combined a pair of bills, in the final days of the legislative session by a total vote of 49 to 10, with Rep. Delena Johnson, R-Palmer, abstaining. The combined bill now goes to Gov. Mike Dunleavy for consideration. 

If approved, the bill would designate strokes and heart attacks to be included in the Alaska Department of Health’s Office of Emergency Services trauma system, and require the state to develop a coordinated system of care with first responders, transport agencies, hospitals and clinics. That includes developing standardized protocols and training for all first responders, establishing statewide guidelines based nationally accredited standards and procedures and communicating a patient’s condition to receiving hospitals or clinics.

“There are now best practices and improved technology for addressing severe strokes and heart attacks and designating stroke centers and severe heart attack centers, but no one is coordinating these hospitals, these provider organizations, and communities on improving this care,” Mina said.

In 2022, 744 Alaskans died from trauma, 217 died from strokes and 510 died from cardiovascular disease such as a heart attack, according to data provided by Mina’s office.

“At least 41 states have or are finalizing regional or statewide stroke and heart attack protocols to ensure that patients are transported directly to level one stroke centers,” she said. “This bill will help reduce transfer times throughout our state to meet this golden hour, which will in turn help improve outcomes and cost savings to the state.”

“We can’t change when a patient arrives at a hospital. We can help improve these workflows to diagnose the case and make this decision-making process more efficient,” she added.

The state’s expansion of the trauma system is estimated to cost roughly $250,000, according to a state fiscal note, which includes a new public health specialist position, travel and IT system enhancements.

The Alaska Stroke Coalition, Guardian Flight — which provides air and ground ambulance services — and Providence Hospital in Anchorage penned letters of support for the legislation that said improving coordinated, standardized emergency response systems will be a “win-win” for patients and providers.

“Even the smallest delays in care can have huge consequences for the person experiencing a stroke,” wrote members of the executive team with the Alaska Stroke Coalition. A stroke is defined by a damage to the brain caused by interruption of blood supply, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and permanent brain damage can occur within four to six minutes. 

“Treatment delays of just 15 minutes can mean the difference between leaving the hospital capable of independent living or permanent reliance on others for the activities of daily life,” they wrote. 

“A third of the patients who experience stroke are under the age of 65 and most of these patients can never return to work, resulting in both a loss of income potential and a significant reliance on medical resources for support,” they noted. “In a state like Alaska where our demographics skew younger, this has a profound impact.” 

The window of response to heart attacks is equally critical. 

Another bill added by senators to the legislative package would “encourage” school districts to provide hands-on training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation education, known as CPR, in health education for kindergarten through 12th graders. 

Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, D-Anchorage, sponsored the bill. “When administered immediately, CPR can more than triple a person’s chance of survival,” she told lawmakers at a March 23 hearing.

“This legislation aims to strengthen health education in our schools by equipping students with the knowledge and the skills that they need to respond effectively in emergencies,” she said, and recalled that CPR has been necessary in the Capitol building more than once. 

“And those moments lives were saved simply because someone nearby had the training and the confidence to act,” she said. 

Doug Schrage, fire chief for the Municipality of Anchorage, testified in support of the bill and noted the CPR skills students learn can be applied in school settings or at home.

“We know that most cardiac arrests occur in the home and believe a student of any age that has been trained in CPR is likely to be home and can provide lifesaving care. There are many examples where a student has provided CPR in the home,” he said.

Survival rates for heart attack are quite low, Schrage noted, but with hands-on CPR chances improve. 

Jason Dolph, a safety officer with the Anchorage Fire Department, testified to lawmakers about  his first day on the job as a firefighter, when he entered a home where no one was trained in CPR.  

“There was a man laying on the couch, he was gray in color, and around him was about eight family members, and none were performing CPR or attempting any other life-saving measures. And you have to ask yourself, why? Why would a family member not be willing to, or to help, or engage? And it was simply because they didn’t know what to do, no one had ever trained them in CPR. They never had the opportunity,” he said. 

Dolph said equipping children with the skills and confidence to be responsive bystanders will help improve outcomes.

“During my career, I’ve responded to more than 10,000 emergency calls and incidents, and in that time I’ve made this observation that when responders arrive and no bystander is performing CPR, we most often have negative results, despite our best efforts, and despite advancements in medicine,” he said. 

The bill directs the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development to determine which grade levels are required to receive the training and develop the appropriate curriculum, based on evidence-based, national standards. 

If approved by the governor, the legislation would take effect in July 2027. 

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For countless generations, people of the Bering Strait region have relied on the food they harvest from the sea without worrying about harmful algal blooms that threaten seafood eaters in warmer and more southern latitudes.

Now, as the Northern Bering Sea undergoes cascading effects of a warming climate, algal risks pose a new challenge.

The change has been dramatic.

And it has prompted a change in the way Nome youth grow up learning about collecting food from the waters around their home. In early April, Nome high school students traveled to Bethel with their science teacher, where they presented their research at the Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference held by Alaska Sea Grant.

Algal toxins were present, at very low but detectable levels, in fish they eat.

Sophomore Audrey Bruner-Alvanna was among the group of student researchers. She said young people are concerned about algal blooms, which proliferate in warmer conditions, and their potential effects on wild food resources.

“Because, you know, as the climate changes, as the world gets warmer and stuff, there’s going to be more of these toxins and stuff during summer,” she said. “I feel like a lot of people that I’ve talked to have been wondering about how our subsistence is going to change in the future based on all of that.”

The student research came about after one of the nation’s densest and biggest concentrations of toxin-producing Alexandrium algae ever documented burst forth in the waters of the Bering Strait region in 2022. 

Until the appearance of the “massive bloom, the most toxic bloom, the longest-persisting bloom in the U.S.,” local people barely knew what harmful algal blooms or Alexandrium are, said Emma Pate, president of the Nome Eskimo Community, the local tribal government.

“So we had to figure things out and learn really fast,” Pate said during an October “Strait Science” presentation hosted by the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Nome campus.

That 2022 bloom followed prior years’ discoveries of Alexandrium toxins in clams and marine mammals, and it was followed by more discoveries and another big Alexandrium bloom. For local people, who harvest marine foods year-round, using sea ice as a platform in winter and open water after the ice melts in summer, the developments present new questions.

How far in the marine food web have the paralysis-causing algal toxins spread? How can people ensure that wild foods are safe? How can younger generations understand and manage something that used to be a non-issue but is now an environmental reality?

Those high school students were enlisted to help find some answers. Pate, who was working at the time for the Nome-based tribal health provider Norton Sound Health Corporation, and Gay Sheffield, the Nome-based marine advisory agent for the Alaska Sea Grant program, recruited the students from Nome-Beltz High School. 

They led them in a crash course in 2023 on harmful algal blooms. The instruction included field work to learn how to sample water for algal contents.

The students followed up by descending on Nome’s frozen harbor with ice-fishing gear. They plucked out masses of tomcod, a species also known as saffron cod, that is a favored local food. They shipped off some of the tomcod to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation lab in Anchorage for testing; they cooked, shared and ate the rest.

The assumption was that no toxins would show up in tomcod swimming in the harbor in winter but that the exercise would be a good lesson in the scientific method, said Sarah Liben, the Nome-Beltz High science teacher helping to lead the project.

Results reported in early 2024 from the DEC lab were startling: Livers of the tomcod that Liben’s students caught held detectable levels of Alexandrium-produced saxitoxin and related gonyautoxin that also cause paralytic shellfish poisoning. Levels were far below anything that would pose dangers to people, but the presence itself was an important scientific discovery.

“When these results first came out, scientists were actually shocked,” Liben said.

Her students’ work continued. An ice-fishing expedition last December produced another round of fish tested at the DEC lab, this time in a different methodology that examined full body contents. The lab tests revealed no saxitoxin in the students’ tomcod, but they did show the presence of potentially poisonous gonyautoxin compounds, which are related to saxitoxin.

Changing environment holds a ‘sleeping giant’ 

Scientists have already confirmed the potential for continued massive blooms of algal toxins in the Bering Strait region and farther north. On the sea floor, they have discovered some of the world’s biggest and most concentrated beds of dormant Alexandrium, the algae that produces saxitoxin and related toxins. Those Alexandrium cyst beds were once the dead end for algal cells that, for decades and even centuries, drifted north and sank. But now underwater temperatures are occasionally high enough to enable those cyst beds to bloom.

Don Anderson of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who has been leading research expeditions mapping the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort sea cyst beds, describes them as a “sleeping giant” that are poised to erupt in massive blooms if temperatures get warm enough.

Anderson and Kathi Lefebvre, a Seattle-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research biologist, have devoted several years of study to the spread of harmful algal blooms in Alaska’s northern waters. Their work is part of a NOAA program called Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms, or ECOHAB.

In the Bering Strait region, the algal blooms and the toxins they produce are among the long-term and cascading changes that stem from warming.

There is less sea ice year-round, and what exists is thinner and younger than the ice cover used to be. Successive marine heat waves have triggered bird and mammals die-offs. Fish species are shifting, with the higher-fat Arctic species like Arctic cod being pushed out by expanding lower-fat boreal species like pollock and Pacific cod. More open waters have drawn more ship traffic through the Bering Strait, the Pacific gateway to the Arctic Ocean. There is increased industrial activity, including harvests by large-scale fishing vessels chasing Pacific cod and other species that have moved north from the southern Bering Sea. Heightened activity extends the military sphere; there are increased geopolitical tensions as Russian and Chinese aircraft and ships make incursions into territory near the strait.

All that affects the people who depend on the sea for their food, starting with clams, the usual suspects in paralytic shellfish poisoning cases farther south.

Clams retrieved from the seafloor in the floors of the Northern Bering and Chukchi seas during research expeditions from 2019 to 2022, as well as some harvested by residents, turned out to have saxitoxin levels well above the threshold for safe consumption by people. One clam harvested at St. Lawrence Island was shown to have toxin levels more than five times the safety threshold.

There were no reports of algal toxin-related sickness in this region during and after the 2022 algal bloom. But it did affect people’s behavior. Many residents opted out of eating their traditional wild foods, substituting sometimes costly store-bought items for them, according to a study co-authored by Nome-based tribal and health care officials.

Traditional foods from the sea include the tomcod, like the fish the Nome-Beltz High students caught, which some people eat frozen and dipped in seal oil. They include fish that support important commercial harvests: salmon, halibut and king crab. They also include some invertebrates that might seem a little obscure elsewhere, like tunicates, sometimes called sea squirts.

Traditional consumption extends to parts of those fish that are not usually eaten elsewhere – organs like livers, which can be mixed with berries to make a traditional dish, and the crab viscera that is usually discarded by commercial harvesters. That is part of the tradition of “comprehensive utilization of the marine environment for food,” as described by Gay Sheffield, the Nome-based Alaska Sea Grant marine advisory program agent.

Walrus concerns

Walrus hunting is another tradition for Indigenous residents — supplying meat, along with skins and walrus crafted into artwork. The food includes what is in walrus stomachs.

“We eat the clams that wash up from the storms,” said Merle Apassingok, a walrus hunter and traditional knowledge holder from Gambell, one of the two St. Lawrence Island communities. “But we also eat clams from inside the walrus.”

Those clams found inside walrus stomachs are already cooked by digestive juices, he explained. “They microwave naturally in the walrus stomach,” he said with a laugh.

People who depend on wild foods from the sea have another worry besides algal toxins’ impacts on food safety: the conservation of the fish and wildlife populations that support their cultures.

There are already some indications of impacts to clam-eating walruses.

In the late summer of 2019, there was a die-off of 39 walruses in the western part of the Bering Strait. Four of them were found to have saxitoxin in their bodies.

The walrus die-off was not considered an algal toxin smoking gun, and its cause remains undetermined. It was not until 2024, when several dead northern fur seals were found on St. Paul Island in the Pribilofs archipelago nearly 500 miles south of Nome, that saxitoxin was confirmed as killing any marine mammals.

Scientists are trying to learn about what is a toxic level for walruses and other marine mammals, as well as for finfish and birds, said Thomas Farrugia, coordinator of the Alaska Harmful Algal Bloom Network.

The network is a collaboration of government agencies, tribal organizations, science institutions and other entities that monitor algal blooms in the state.

In general, toxins in birds and mammals are more transitory than they are in clams and mussels, which can hold toxins for several months, Farrugia said. However, toxins can accumulate and linger in organs like fish livers and crab viscera, also known as “crab butter,” which are part of some traditional diets, he said.

It will take much more work to figure out what is dangerous for animals and people, Farrugia said. “All this is cutting edge,” he said.

Even sublethal amounts of algal toxins could be a problem, he said. Chronic exposure to toxins might, over time, weaken animals and compromise their ability to forage effectively. “It could kill them by starvation, eventually,” he said.

Lefebvre pioneered the study of algal toxins in Alaska’s Arctic and subarctic marine mammals. A groundbreaking study she led, published in 2016, found toxins in all 13 species examined.

But figuring out the population-wide impact of algal toxins on animals like walruses is difficult, given the wide range of challenges they face in the Arctic, she said.

“Marine mammals have so many things to deal with,” she said during an April trip to Nome, where she met with tribal members to plan upcoming research tasks. “I mean, the loss of ice, the warmer waters, the movement of prey, other diseases. And then on top of it, harmful algal bloom toxins.”

Loss of summer sea ice is forcing walruses to crowd on shore, away from prime feeding areas where they used to forage from ice floes, for example. In such crowded conditions, young walrus calves can be killed in stampedes. Those stampedes can be touched off by noise and other disturbances from ship and aircraft traffic that is growing as the open-water season widens.

Another question the scientists and tribes are trying to answer is how the fish and mammals are ingesting saxitoxin and related toxins.

While walruses’ clam-eating behavior can explain their exposure, the mechanism of toxin delivery to fish like tomcod remains unknown, Farrugia said. The students’ detection of paralytic toxins in tomcod bodies in the winter adds to the mystery.

“If you see toxins in December, January or February, somebody along the way, some component in the food chain, has held onto toxins,” he said.

Tribes and local partners doing research

The emerging questions about algal toxins are at the core of a new ECOHAB project led by Anderson and Lefebvre that is putting Bering Sea tribes at the forefront of the research.

The project, part of NOAA’s ECOHAB program, is aimed at assessing the exposure risks and impacts of algal toxins on marine resources utilized for subsistence and the security and safety of traditional wild foods. The Nome Eskimo Community and more than a dozen other tribal governments are partners, as is the North Slope Borough. The project began last year and is to run until 2030. Goals include the fine-tuning of methods to measure harmful algae in the water, building local toxin quantification capabilities and establishing foundations for early warnings about food safety and potential risks to wildlife. 

The tribes have incentives to take on the project responsibility. The Bering Strait region is somewhat isolated from government agencies that might otherwise do a lot of the work.

The DEC lab in Anchorage that tested the Nome-Beltz High School students’ tomcod is about 550 miles away. While the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the National Park Service have offices and staff in Nome, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and Alaska Department of Natural Resources do not. There is no year-round U.S. Coast Guard presence, though the Coast Guard conducts a summer operation based in Kotzebue, 180 miles north of Nome.

Trump administration cuts have affected the work of the National Weather Service, an agency that provides information critical to people who gather their foods from the land and water. The detailed daily weather reports broadcast by local radio station KNOM, now come with a disclaimer: “Due to staffing changes at the National Weather Service, the current weather may differ from what has been forecasted.”

The region’s residents and the ECOHAB-affiliated scientists are also challenged by the lack of information from the Russian side of the Bering Sea. International tensions have shut down communications, even though conditions and events on the Russian side of the maritime border affect Alaskans. One important feature is the Anadyr Current, which originates in Russia’s Gulf of Anadyr. It is a major source of low-saline water, nutrients and algae, including Alexandrium, that sweeps up through the Bering Strait. Conditions on the Russian side of the Bering Sea might prove important this summer; while the Eastern Bering Sea off Alaska was unusually cold, the Western Bering Sea off Russia has been unusually warm.

Those obstacles make local observation and science more important as algal blooms spread north. Still, even as the environment changes, close examination of it is nothing new, said Apassingok, the walrus hunter, who himself is a co-author of a 2024 scientific study about climate change impacts on walrus hunters.

“Our forebears were vigilant people,” Apassingok said. “They were vigilant of wild animals, creatures. But nowadays we’re being vigilant on the molecular level, too.”

This article was produced as a project for USC Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism and Center for Climate Journalism and Communication 2025 Health and Climate Change Reporting Fellowship.

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Celebration, one of the largest cultural events in Alaska, will return to Juneau next week from June 3 to 6.

The lead dance group will be Lepquinm Gumilgit Gagoadim Tsimshian Dancers (Our Own Dance in Our Hearts), a multigenerational group from Anchorage formed in 2005. The theme of the gathering organized by Sealaska Heritage Institute is “Enduring Strength.”

“This Celebration, we can rejoice in the timeless strength of our people as evidenced over the thousands of years we’ve faced adversity with resilience and fortitude,” said SHI President Rosita Ḵaaháni Worl in a prepared statement.

The Celebration 2026 art was designed by Tlingit artist Bill Pfeifer Jr. (Wéidaaká Yóodóohaa), who won with his piece “Endurance and Strength: The Power of the Clan House,” inspired by the 2026 theme.

The lead dance group is responsible for leading the Grand Entrance and Grand Exit songs, during which every participating group dances across the stage at Centennial Hall to mark the beginning and end of Celebration. More than 1,800 dancers from 34 dance groups — including two new groups from Hawaii and New Zealand — will participate this year.

Grand Entrance will begin at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall along Willoughby Avenue, ending at Centennial Hall by 7:30 p.m.

The dance-and-culture festival began in 1982 as a way for Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people to gather and celebrate their cultural survival, according to a SHI press release.

What started as hundreds of people gathering in Juneau for the event “sparked a renaissance of Native culture that prompted people largely unfamiliar with their heritage to learn their ancestral songs and dances and to make regalia for future Celebrations.”

Now thousands of people are drawn to Juneau for the cultural event, “the largest gathering of Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people in the world.” Everyone is welcome to attend.

“We have survived environmental and climate changes, the loss of our lands, public policies that nearly wiped out our cultures and epidemics that diminished our populations,” Worl said. “We have been tested, and almost erased. Yet we are still here.”

Along with traditional song and dance, Celebration has grown to include associated events: a Juried Art Show and Competition, a Juried Youth Art Exhibit, a Toddler Regalia Review, an Indigenous Fashion Show, a Native Artist Market, and food contests.

The 2026 Celebration will also feature several new events, including:

• A blanket toss by Traditional Games participants
• Earring-making classes
• A print lab open house
• A Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy book launch
• Lectures by cultural leaders and artists Te Ara Kuaka, David Boxley and Delores Churchill
• A “House of Rock” concert
• Additional SHI programming, including an open house in the Indigenous Science Building and a Baby Raven Reads pop-up event
• A regalia photo booth
• A screening of “Tlingit Macbeth”
• A project documenting clan crests

From next Wednesday to Saturday, daily admission tickets and four-day passes will be available at Centennial Hall and Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall. Four-day passes will be sold at the Sealaska Heritage Store downtown on Monday and Tuesday. Volunteers can apply here. Celebration will also be livestreamed on SHI’s YouTube channel and a statewide broadcast on KTOO.

While Celebration officially opens on Wednesday at Centennial Hall, canoe journey landings will unofficially kickstart the event at Auke Recreation Area and downtown on Tuesday.

Canoe landings

At 1 p.m. on Tuesday, the Áak’w Kwáan will welcome canoes ashore at Auke Rec. Parking is limited for elders, volunteers, nearby residents and those with handicap permits. Parking will also be available at the University of Alaska Southeast with shuttle transportation available between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. It’s advised to bring a camp chair, food and water.

Community members are invited to watch the downtown landing and Tʼaaḵu Ḵwáan cultural ceremony at 2 p.m. at the Huna Totem Corp. lot next to the U.S. Coast Guard station at 345 Egan Drive.

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The state of Alaska has the right to make public data from exploration wells drilled by ConocoPhillips in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, an appeals court has ruled.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, issued Wednesday, overturns a 2023 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason that allowed well data to remain under wraps.

At issue is a collection of wells drilled in the reserve, which is federal territory. ConocoPhillips argued that data confidentiality is explicitly guaranteed in federal law and that federal law supersedes state law, but the appeals justices disagreed.

On the National Petroleum Reserve, “Alaska has its own authority to gather — and disclose — data collected from oil and gas exploration, authority that it exercised even before Congress opened the Reserve to private exploration,” the appeals court ruling said.

The Indiana-sized National Petroleum Reserve is of keen interest to energy companies. It is underlain by a formation called the Nanushuk, the source of oil for ConocoPhillips’ huge Willow project, which is under development, the Santos-operated Pikka project, which recently started production, and other prospects. A lease sale held in the reserve in March, the first since 2019, drew a record $163 million in high bids.

Under state law, data from exploratory oil and gas wells is to be disclosed publicly after those wells are completed. State law provides for a 24-month period of confidentiality, after which the AOGCC is to make the data publicly available, unless the Department of Natural Resources commissioner grants an exemption to keep the information confidential for a longer period.

After ConocoPhillips’ request for a DNR exemption was denied, the company in 2022 sued the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to keep the data confidential.

ConocoPhillips argued that the federal Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act expressly prevents the AOGCC and Gas Conservation Commission from disclosing data from the wells, which were drilled on federal leases.

Gleason’s March 8, 2023, ruling came to a slightly different conclusion that nonetheless backed ConocoPhillips. She found that the federal law implicitly protects data confidentiality, despite state law.

The appeals court judges agreed that the federal law has no explicit restriction on state release of well data, but they drew a different conclusion from that finding than Gleason did.

For the state, the appeals court ruling is a victory that is good for future development, Acting Attorney General Cori Mills said in a statement.

“Alaska relies heavily on our resources and resource development. We are also stewards of those resources for the citizens of Alaska. Alaska’s law both allows resource development now, and encourages further development and exploration in the future. We’re pleased that the Ninth Circuit recognized that federal law has not overridden Alaska’s balanced approach,” Mills said.

ConocoPhillips is still considering its next steps, a company spokesperson said. “ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc. has received the court’s decision and is evaluating it. ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc. has not decided on whether to appeal the decision,” company spokesperson Megan Olson said by email.

The well data that is the subject of the case remains confidential, according to court documents. Confidentiality has been maintained all the time that the court case has been active.

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Legislators are being held after school this month and the state is paying for the extra time because the governor did not do his homework.

If that seems backward, you’re right.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered lawmakers to stay late after the regular legislative session ended because he insists that they approve major big-time relief from property taxes for the owners of the proposed, possible, maybe someday Alaska North Slope natural gas pipeline and export project.

The governor believes the multi-multibillion-dollar project will go ahead if the state House and Senate approve a tax relief package during a special legislative session. That’s all it needs, he keeps telling Alaskans. Cut the property taxes and all the parts will fit together and construction can start.

He talks as if building and paying for the most expensive oil or gas project ever in the history of North America is as simple as snapping together an Erector Set, Lincoln Logs or Lego model.

Dunleavy’s instructions booklet includes his salesman’s vision of the finished project, telling Alaska’s population center around Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough that residents and businesses will enjoy affordable natural gas for heat and electricity for decades to come.

If it were that easy, the pipeline would have been built a long time ago. There is a lot more to do than just writing off most of the property taxes — such as developing realistic construction cost estimates and schedules, contracting customers to buy the gas and obtaining committed pledges of investment and financing totaling tens of billions of dollars.

It’s hard to see how a couple billion dollars that the governor believes is all the project can afford to pay in lieu of property taxes over 30 years can make or break a venture that could take in $300 billion in gross revenues over that same period.

Getting the gas project would be good for Alaska’s economy, no question about it, but getting there takes homework. And that’s where the governor skipped class.

It’s not like the project came as a surprise to anyone who completed the assigned reading. The state has been looking at what it could do to make the pipeline happen for a long time, most recently during Dunleavy’s six years as a state senator and all eight years of his two terms in the governor’s office.

What changed last year was that a private developer named Glenfarne Group, out of New York City, stepped up to take over management and 75% ownership of the venture from the state agency that had been unsuccessful in its efforts the past decade.

And what changed over the winter was talk of needing to escape the cost of full property taxes on the project.

But what didn’t change was the governor’s laid-back approach to work. He waited until the legislative session was half over before he introduced the tax relief bill he had promised months earlier. And even when he did turn in his work, it was inadequate on facts, numbers, analysis and disclosure.

It was the kind of homework that a teacher would mark “incomplete.” Which is what the Legislature did. 

Now the governor wants lawmakers to work overtime to finish his assignment. And he figures to blame legislators if the gas project does not go ahead.

Dunleavy would have a better chance at passing the class — or passing a bill — if he would just admit he slept through the lecture on gas pipeline economics and accept the blame for a late and incomplete paper.

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