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Alaska political leaders excited by President Trump’s backing of gas pipeline in address to Congress

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Alaska political leaders excited by President Trump’s backing of gas pipeline in address to Congress


President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Alaska political leaders on Wednesday broadly welcomed President Donald Trump’s remarks to Congress talking up the prospects of the state’s long-sought but faltering natural gas pipeline.

In his speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, the president said, “It will be truly spectacular. It’s all set to go.”

Trump said South Korea and Japan want to partner and invest “trillions of dollars each” into the “gigantic” pipeline, which has been estimated to cost $44 billion. Japanese news outlets reported Tuesday that no final investment decisions had been made by either nation.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy — who earlier in his political career was skeptical of the pipeline — said that the president’s support “will ensure this massive LNG project is completed, and clean Alaska gas supplies our Asian allies and our Alaskan residents for decades to come.”

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U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said on social media that “the stars are aligned like never before” for the project, which he called “a decades-long energy dream for Alaska.”

In a later post, Sullivan said that he and Dunleavy had urged Trump to give Alaska LNG a “shout out” in his congressional address.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who in recent days has been critical of Trump’s moves to fire federal employees en masse, freeze federal funding and publicly criticize Ukraine’s president, thanked Trump for promoting the pipeline on the national stage.

“This project can provide Alaska and the world with clean and affordable energy for decades to come, while creating thousands of new jobs and generating billions of dollars in new revenues,” Murkowski said.

U.S. Rep. Nick Begich said, “Alaska is poised to play a central role in America’s energy resurgence.”

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The decades-long plan to construct an 800-mile pipeline to deliver natural gas from the North Slope for export has stalled in recent years.

In his speech to Congress, Trump said, “My administration is also working on a gigantic natural gas pipeline in Alaska, among the largest in the world, where Japan, South Korea and other nations want to be our partner with investments of trillions of dollars each. It has never been anything like that one. It will be truly spectacular. It’s all set to go. The permitting has gotten.”

The Alaska Gasline Development Corp. — the state agency leading the project — has state and federal permits, but it has not secured financing.

A corporation spokesperson thanked Trump on Wednesday for his “vocal advocacy” for the pipeline.

“There is tremendous momentum behind Alaska LNG from potential offtakers, financiers, and other partners eager to participate in this national energy infrastructure priority,” said Tim Fitzpatrick, an AGDC spokesperson, by email.

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Conservative Republican state legislators have been more supportive and optimistic about the project in recent months. The Republican House minority caucus thanked Trump for prioritizing Alaska LNG.

“The proposed LNG project will not only be a huge boost to the economy of Alaska but provide the nation with long term energy security and provide our allies in the global marketplace with needed resources,” said Anchorage GOP Rep. Mia Costello, the House minority leader.

But Alaska state lawmakers have remained broadly skeptical.

The Legislature last year planned to shutter AGDC because it had failed to deliver a pipeline.

”There’s still a lot we need to learn,” said Anchorage Democratic Rep. Donna Mears, chair of the House Energy Committee.

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Legislators have questioned who will finance the project, who will buy the gas, whether a connection would be built to deliver gas to Fairbanks, and if the state would need to invest some of its resources to see the pipeline built.

Members of the Senate majority recently estimated that the state had already spent well over $1 billion to advance the pipeline and related projects.

AGDC recently announced that Glenfarne, a New York-based company, in January signed an exclusive agreement with the state agency to lead development of the project.

Palmer Republican Sen. Shelley Hughes said at the time that the outlook for Alaska LNG was “more positive than it’s ever been.”

One factor that has revived interest: Trump’s tariff threats against Japan and South Korea, The New York Times reported.

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Japanese news outlets reported on Tuesday that while South Korea and Japan’s governments are continuing to study the project, no final investment decisions have been made.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told Japan’s parliament on Tuesday that “we will carefully examine its technical possibilities and profitability,” The Japan Times reported.

Larry Persily, an oil and gas analyst and former Alaska deputy commissioner of revenue, said it would be significant if Japan and South Korea signed binding agreements to buy Alaska gas. Pledging to examine the project would be familiar to Alaskans, he said.

“We’ve had decades of that,” he said.

Nick Fulford, an analyst with the Legislature’s oil and gas consultant GaffneyCline, presented to legislative committees on Wednesday about the global gas market and Alaska LNG.

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Fulford said Alaska LNG would be a “very expensive project” due to capital costs, but its operating costs would be relatively low. The Alaska project’s vulnerabilities — compared to gas developments in the Middle East — are based on “capital cost inflation,” he said.

GaffneyCline’s forecasts for natural gas demand in coming decades range widely, so do cost estimates for construction of the Alaska pipeline.

Persily said at lower demand levels, Alaska LNG does not seem to be needed in the global market. Wide-ranging cost estimates to complete the project are a cause for concern, he said.

“We’re far away from having a reasonable, confident estimate,” Persily said. “Is it a $44 billion project? Is it $50 billion? Is it $60 billion? We don’t know.”





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Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 ASAA State Championship Brackets – March 10

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Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 ASAA State Championship Brackets – March 10


The 2026 Alaska high school girls basketball state championships begin this week, and High School On SI has brackets for all four classifications.

The brackets will be updated with scores and matchups throughout the week.

All four classifications will play their state championship games at Alaska Airlines Center in Anchorage.

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The 1A and 2A championships run March 11-14. Classes 3A and 4A play the following week, March 18-21.

Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 State Championship Brackets, Matchups, Schedule – March 10

3/11 – Shaktoolik (1) vs. Arlicaq (16)

3/11 – Kake (8) vs. Tri-Valley (9)

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3/11 – Fort Yukon (4) vs. Andreafski (13)

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3/11 – Sand Point (5) vs. Napaaqutgmiut (12)

3/11 – Scammon Bay (2) vs. Nunamiut (15)

3/11 – Akiuk Memorial (7) vs. Newhalen (10)

3/11 – Davis-Romoth (3) vs. Cook Inlet Academy (14)

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3/11 – Hoonah (6) vs. Shishmaref (11)


3/12 – Seward (1) vs. Chevak (8)

3/12 – Metlakatla (4) vs. Cordova (5)

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3/12 – Craig (2) vs. Susitna Valley (7)

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3/12 – Glennallen (3) vs. Degnan (6)


3/18 – Barrow (1) vs. Kotzebue (8)

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3/18 – Grace Christian (4) vs. Galena (5)

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3/18 – Monroe Catholic (2) vs. Delta (7)

3/18 – Mt. Edgecumbe (3) vs. Kenai Central (6)

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3/18 – Mountain City Christian Academy (1) vs. North Pole (8)

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3/18 – Colony (4) vs. West (5)

3/18 – Bartlett (2) vs. Juneau-Douglas (7)

3/18 – Wasilla (3) vs. Service (6)


More Coverage from High School On SI



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Made In The USA: The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company

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Made In The USA: The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company


This is the Alaska Wall Tent by the Alaska Gear Company, each one is made in the United States from Sunforger 13oz DLX, a double-filled, pre-shrunk, marine-grade canvas ideal for longterm outdoor use.

The Alaska Wall Tent comes in an array of sizes and versions, allowing you to choose the one that best suits your individual use-case. They’re all individually made in Alaska, and perhaps even more importantly, they’re all tested extensively to be able to handle local conditions.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 5

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 2

Image DescriptionThis is the Alaska Wall Tent by the Alaska Gear Company, each one is made in the United States from Sunforger 13oz DLX, a double-filled, pre-shrunk, marine-grade canvas ideal for longterm outdoor use.

History Speedrun: The Alaska Gear Company

The Alaska Gear Company was formerly known as Airframes Alaska, it’s an aviation and outdoor equipment supplier and manufacturer headquartered in Palmer, Alaska. The company is led by majority owner Sean McLaughlin, who bought the original bush airplane parts business when it had just two employees and $100,000 in annual revenue. McLaughlin has since grown it to approximately 100 employees and $20 million in annual sales.

The company can trace its early roots to a licensed maker of Piper PA-18 Super Cub fuselages at Birchwood Airport. Through a series of acquisitions, including Reeve Air Motive (an aircraft parts retailer operating out of Anchorage’s Merrill Field since 1950, Alaska Tent & Tarp, and Northern Sled Works, the company grew well beyond aviation into outdoor recreation and cold-weather gear.

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That diversification ultimately drove the rebrand from Airframes Alaska to Alaska Gear Company in late 2023, as the old name no longer conveyed the full scope of what the company produces and sells.

The Alaska Gear Company now operates out of three locations – a 100,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Palmer, a production facility in Fairbanks, and a retail store with an in-house sewing workshop at Merrill Field in Anchorage.

Its product lines span two major categories. On the aviation side, the company is best known for its hand-built Alaskan Bushwheel tundra tires, FAA-approved titanium landing gear, Super Cub fuselage modifications, and a wide range of bush plane parts. On the outdoor side, it manufactures Arctic Oven hot tents, canvas wall tents, custom freight and pulk sleds, and a modernized version of the iconic military bunny boot designed for extreme cold weather conditions.

More recently in 2024, the Alaska Gear Company was named “Made in Alaska Manufacturer of the Year” by the Alaska Department of Commerce.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company

The Alaska Canvas Wall Tent is a handmade-in-Alaska canvas tent made from 13oz Sunforger DLX double-filled, preshrunk, marine-grade cotton canvas that’s treated to resist fire, water, and mildew while still remaining breathable.

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It comes in four sizes, including 8×10, 10×12, 12×14, and 14×16 feet, all with 5-foot wall heights, and it’s available either unframed (starting at $1,295) or with a frame (starting at $2,300). The unframed version can be constructed in the field using lengths of wood sourced from the area, reducing the initial pack weight – this is crucial for trips into the wilderness by bush plane where every pound of weight is critical.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 7

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 4

Image DescriptionIt comes in four sizes, including 8×10, 10×12, 12×14, and 14×16 feet, all with 5-foot wall heights, and it’s available either unframed (starting at $1,295) or with a frame (starting at $2,300). The unframed version can be constructed in the field using lengths of wood sourced from the area, reducing the initial pack weight – this is crucial for trips into the wilderness by bush plane where every pound of weight is critical.

All tents include a 4.5 inch oval stove jack for use with wood or propane stoves, as well as a 56 inch triangular rear window with insect screening, an 18oz vinyl sod cloth around the base to block drafts and moisture, ridgepole openings at both ends, rope-reinforced eaves, brass grommets, overlapping door flaps with ties, a heavy-duty zippered door, and 100 feet of sisal rope for tie-downs.

The tents are now available to buy direct from the Alaska Gear Company here, and at the time of writing they have stock ready to ship out immediately.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 10
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 9
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 8
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 3

Images courtesy of the Alaska Gear Company



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Lakes are growing in Alaska. That’s not entirely a bad thing

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Lakes are growing in Alaska. That’s not entirely a bad thing

The St. Elias Mountains in southeast Alaska are dotted with over 100 lakes where glaciers crumble into milky, turquoise water. Those lakes are expanding at an ever-quickening pace.

The lakes will quadruple in size over the next century or two, scientists report March 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This growth will transform landscapes, create new salmon habitat and may even change the course of a major river.

“We are seeing the great age of ice retreat” in Alaska, says Daniel McGrath, a glaciologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “These glaciers are just peeling back from the landscape,” revealing deep grooves they carved in the Earth, where lakes are now forming.

Glacial hydrologist Eran Hood of the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, who was not part of the study, adds that “understanding where these lakes are going to emerge is important” because it “changes the whole nature of the downstream ecosystem.”

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Hugging the coastline along the Alaska-Canada border, the tiny mountainous region that includes the St. Elias Mountains is losing 60 cubic kilometers of ice per year. Because lakes absorb solar heat, the glaciers that shed ice into lakes are shrinking faster than those that terminate on dry land. Across southeast Alaska, these lakes attached to glaciers have expanded by 60 percent since 1986, reaching a combined area of 1,300 square kilometers.

McGrath and his colleagues wondered how far this runaway expansion might go. So, they combined satellite images with estimates of ice thickness — mapping deeply eroded grooves that are still hidden under glaciers.

The results were “eye-opening,” McGrath says. The team identified 4,200 square kilometers of glacier-covered grooves adjacent to existing lakes.

He and his colleagues predict that the lakes will continue to expand — causing rapid ice retreat — until they fill those grooves, reaching a combined size of around 5,500 square kilometers, an area the size of Delaware.

“By the end of this century, all of these lakes will probably be more or less fully developed,” says study coauthor Louis Sass III, a glaciologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Science Center in Anchorage. But those growing lakes are already reshaping entire landscapes in a way that is often overlooked in public discourse around glacier retreat.

Many of Alaska’s glaciers terminate on dry land, and their meltwater often creates barren, rocky floodplains downstream, where the streams alternate between trickles and floods — constantly branching and shifting course as they lay down sediment released by the glacier.

“Those habitats are fairly inhospitable for a lot of fish,” including some salmon, says Jonathan Moore, an aquatic ecologist with Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. The water is too cold, and fish eggs “get swept out or buried by the floods every year.”

But as glaciers retreat into lakes and those lakes expand, their meltwater has time to drop its sediment and warm a few degrees in the lake before spilling into a river. Rivers that carry less sediment are less prone to shifting channels.

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A 2025 study by Moore and remote sensing scientist Diane Whited of the University of Montana found that as glacial lakes expanded over 38 years in southeast Alaska, the downstream river channels stabilized, allowing willows and bushes to spread across floodplains.

“It creates salmon habitat,” Hood says. A 2021 study by Moore and Hood predicted that by 2100, glacial retreat in southeast Alaska will transform 6,000 kilometers of river channels into decent habitat for some local species of salmon. The lakes themselves will create spawning grounds for sockeye salmon — an important commercial species.

But these changes will come with upheaval.

For instance, one major river, the Alsek, will probably shift its course as retreating glaciers cause two lakes to merge, providing an easier path to the ocean.

People in Juneau are feeling another dramatic effect of expanding lakes. At least once per year, a lake dammed by the nearby Mendenhall Glacier spills out in a flash flood that gushes through town, forcing some residents to build protective levees around their homes.

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These ecosystems “are going to be transformed,” Moore says. “But that transformation is going to be pretty violent and pretty dangerous.”



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