THE LINK: JULY 2023 33 (907) 562-0062 | northrim.com We Bank On Alaskans At Northrim, we focus on serving the needs of Alaska and our neighbors who live here. We are committed to responsible resource development and the businesses that power Alaska. And that brings positive energy to all of our communities. ACHIEVE MORE where the side-conferences and lobbying were as important, if not more so, that what was said at the podium. Dunleavy is clearly looking for a legacy for his second and final term as governor and energy and economic sustainability seems part of this. Yergin brought his global perspective to the conference. In his final day address he said nice things about Alaska, appropriate given the audience, and that the state’s role in the energy transition is still unrecognized (the conference will help that, he said). Some key points: World energy markets have been turned upside down by Ukraine, he said. Russia is no longer an oil and gas superpower; LNG from the U.S. Gulf Coast turned out to be crucial in helping get Europe through the first winter of the war, with gas shut off from Russia. There appears to be no doing back, Yergin said. He sees the U.S. assuming a major role as a world LNG supplier, and LNG in general assuming new strategic importance. With the U.S.-China relationship now strained, Japan is moving ever closer to the U.S. With U.S. LNG exports now coming only from the Gulf Coast, “we need LNG capacity from the west coast,” Yergin said. There are LNG export projects under development in the west, but Alaska should play a significant role because of the sheer volume of exports that are possible. Yergin was just back from the G-7 Summit in Japan where the closing statements, though a little ambiguous, were definitely in support of and expanded LNG world trade, and not just to reduce coal-burning and carbon emissions but as a security matter. “Energy security is back on the table,” he said. Yergin noted strategic and critical minerals as key in the energy transition, particularly copper, and he spoke of Alaska’s potential in metals. He also mentioned the permitting and litigation delays in the U.S. that hamper domestic development of strategic metals like copper. He made a point of mentioning the delays in development of high-grade copper in the Ambler region in Northwest Alaska where lawsuits by environmental groups and permit problems with the U.S. Department of the Interior and slowing progress on the 211-mile Ambler Access Project, an industrial road to the copper discoveries. Ironically, Yergin’s mention of the Ambler road problems came on the same that that Ambler Metals, LLC, the joint-venture exploration company doing work on the copper, and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state agency that will finance and own the road, announced that they had been informed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management of a six-month delay in a new Record of Decision, or ROD, for the project. The decision was supposed to come at the end of 2023. Instead, it will be mid-2024. No explanation by the BLM was given. On an even more sober closing note, in an answer to one of the governor’s questions, Yergin said the world is reverting back to regionalism in trade. “The era of globalism is over. Borders are going up again, which means costs and (trade) regulatory issues will rise. These will be more challenging times,” he said. — Tim Bradner
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