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(Photo by Vitaly Gariev via Unsplash)
The average American hits their energy wall before 3 p.m. on any given day, according to new research. A survey of 2,000 U.S. adults revealed that by 2:48 p.m., their energy typically begins to fade, though one in five (21%)…
Cook Inlet near Clam Gulch is seen on Oct. 23, 2025. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
State and industry officials and the U.S. Coast Guard were responding on Tuesday to an unexplained oil spill roughly 60 miles southwest of Anchorage in Southcentral Alaska’s Cook Inlet.
The spill, which produced a long oil sheen on the water near the Trading Bay area on the western side of the inlet, was first spotted by a pilot on Monday. His report prompted a multiagency response.
The multiagency unified command is composed of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, the U.S. Coast Guard and Hilcorp, the dominant oil and gas operator in Cook Inlet.
The sheen was seen near the idled Spark platform, one of 17 oil and gas platforms in the inlet. Six of those, including Spark, are now inactive. The Spark platform was acquired by Hilcorp as part of its 2012 purchase of Marathon Oil’s Cook Inlet assets. It has been inactive since 1992, said a statement issued by the unified command responding to the spill. The wells associated with the Spark platform were plugged and abandoned by a previous owner in 2009, the statement said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, however, the ongoing investigation has not pinpointed a source of the spill, its size or even the substance, DEC officials said.
An oil-response vessel sent by Hilcorp to the site arrived shortly after 2 a.m. on Tuesday, but its crew was not able to spot the sheen with infrared imaging technology, said the incident command statement. The spill-response vessel, the Endeavor, has been sailing in a grid pattern to search for the spilled material and its possible source, the statement said.
There were no reports of impacts to fish or wildlife as of Tuesday afternoon, said a DEC situation report issued on Tuesday afternoon.
Fish could be potentially at risk, the situation report said. All five species of Pacific salmon swim in the affected waters, and coho and sockeye salmon were migrating through the area at the time the spill was reported, the situation report said.
Representatives of area environmental groups said Tuesday that the event was a warning about risks to the inlet.
Satchel Pondolfino, the clean water lead for Cook Inletkeeper, said she and others are concerned about the apparent association with the idled but still-standing Spark platform.
“It’s just another reason why it’s so important that Alaska use its authority to hold Hilcorp and every other operator accountable for dismantling the infrastructure,” she said.
Activists have called for the removal of such unused infrastructure from the inlet, but the state so far has not ordered any company to do that.
Cooper Freeman, Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said numerous natural resources continue to be at risk from the incident and others like it.
“It’s gut-wrenching to see the inlet’s beleaguered salmon and belugas take a hit they can’t afford from a miles-long oil spill,” he said in an emailed statement. “We need Cook Inlet’s fish and wildlife to recover, and we can’t keep treating their home like an industrial waste zone. This is yet another wake-up call that our over-reliance on fossil fuels imperils not just our region’s long-term energy stability, but the vitality of our environment for all future Alaskans.”
A computer screen reflects a window, and shows the default prompt when opening ChatGPT, a popular generative AI application often credited with igniting the AI boom since its release in 2022. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
Alaska has a workforce problem that artificial intelligence could either ease or worsen. The state needs more people who can become skilled, dependable workers. AI can remove routine work and make experienced employees more productive. But if employers simply eliminate the junior tasks that once taught people how the work actually functions, they may save time today while weakening the supply of capable workers tomorrow.
That risk matters in a state already investing heavily in apprenticeship. Alaska’s Registered Apprenticeship program reports thousands of active apprentices and more than 1,000 apprenticeable occupations, while the state’s State Training and Employment Program supports employer-linked training, including on-the-job training and registered apprenticeship.
The lesson from those programs should shape workplace AI adoption far beyond the traditional trades: People develop judgment through real work under experienced supervision.
The latest labor evidence makes the case for designing AI adoption around coached judgment rather than simply removing junior work more urgent. The Stanford Digital Economy Lab’s August 2026 Canaries update found that the employment shortfall for workers ages 22–25 in highly AI-exposed occupations widened from 15% in the July 2025 data vintage to 19% by June 2026.
Employers should respond by automating preparation, not apprenticeship.
Consider the kinds of tasks AI can now handle quickly: drafting a first report, summarizing records, preparing a customer response, assembling research, classifying routine cases or producing a preliminary analysis. Those tasks may look like drudgery, but they also used to give newer workers repeated exposure to the ordinary cases that teach them what normal looks like.
Once that preparation is automated, junior roles should move toward verification and exceptions. A newer employee can check whether an AI-generated summary matches the source record, investigate discrepancies, compare an unusual case with prior examples, test an assumption, explain why a recommendation is uncertain and prepare the question that requires a senior decision.
That is more valuable work than copying information from one system to another. It can also build competence faster, if experienced workers still coach it.
Alaska employers should therefore adopt a simple mentor-time rule: When an AI workflow saves experienced employees time, reserve a defined share of those saved hours for coaching newer workers. Use that time for case reviews, feedback on failed outputs, explanation of difficult judgments and supervised decisions.
The approach fits Alaska particularly well. In a large, geographically dispersed state, employers cannot always solve a talent gap by hiring an experienced replacement from across town. Health care, public administration, natural-resource industries, transportation, professional services and technology all depend on transferring practical knowledge from people who have seen unusual situations to people who have not yet seen them.
Employers should also add one metric to their AI scorecards: time to independent competence. Measure how long it takes a new worker to spot a bad AI output, handle common exceptions, explain a recommendation and complete routine decisions with limited supervision.
That metric changes the economics of automation. A workflow that saves 20 percent of junior hours but makes the remaining employees slower to develop may create a hidden liability. A workflow that removes clerical preparation while giving beginners more exposure to review, exceptions and coached judgment may build stronger employees in less time.
Alaska already understands the logic of apprenticeship. The state should carry that logic into AI-exposed office and professional work.
Use AI to shorten the distance between beginner and expert. Let machines handle more preparation. Give people more responsibility for verification, exceptions, communication and judgment. Then spend part of the time automation saves on the human coaching that keeps Alaska’s workforce growing.
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By: James Brooks, Alaska Beacon
It’s not a typo. The price of a gallon of gasoline in the northwest Alaska village of Shungnak was $26.82 on Friday, local residents and regional officials said, likely giving the community the dubious honor of having the most expensive gasoline in the United States.
“It is very much real,” said Glenda Douglas, who manages the store in Shungnak and posted a picture of the price on Facebook.
Across the United States, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $4.10 on Thursday.
Shungnak is about 280 river miles east of Kotzebue, up the Kobuk River, or 150 miles as the airplane flies. Air travel is the only reliable, year-round form of transportation.
In summer, the river is usually navigable by boat. In winter, residents travel by snowmachine. Last fall and for parts of this summer, water levels on the Kobuk were low enough to interrupt barge traffic, which contributed to the high price of gasoline.
“We sell groceries, diesel and gas,” Douglas said via Facebook message. “We had to get gas flown in twice this summer since (the) barge isn’t able to make it this way because the river water levels (are) too low. Just yesterday, the price was 13.99, but now it is 26.82.”
Shareholders in NANA Regional Corp. are eligible for a discount — they can buy gas for $21.46 per gallon.
Albie Dallemolle is NANA’s vice president of economic development and sustainability.
“Confirmed, Shungnak gasoline price is $26.82 per gallon, which had to be flown into the community,” she said by text message. “This price does reflect the highest cost for gasoline in the region … for now. Unfortunately, prices for gasoline and diesel are expected to increase once communities receive their fall barge deliveries.”
That’s because the current price is based in part on an average of the air-delivered fuel and cheaper barge-delivered fuel. New barge-delivered fuel, bought after the Iran War began, is expected to be more expensive than fuel bought before the war.
Shungnak frequently endures some of the highest fuel prices in Alaska.
In 2007, a gallon of regular unleaded was already $8.11 per gallon, so costly that the Wall Street Journal used the village as an example of what rural Alaska was experiencing that year. By 2022, the price was $14.03 per gallon, according to figures from the Northwest Arctic Borough.
In a message, Douglas said one thing that particularly concerns her is the fact that hunting season has arrived in the region.
Many people in the region practice a subsistence lifestyle, hunting and fishing for food they use to survive.
“(That price) is really going to hurt our hunters that pay for gas to hunt,” she said.
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