Dunleavy missing from the campaign to keep the lights on

Independent journalist Nat Herz has this update on the impending natural gas shortage in Southcentral Alaska, a situation that calls for immediate action that is not taking place.

“The window for making decisions is closing,” says Bob Pickett, a longtime member of the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.

“If things just sort of slide and there’s no leadership, and we’re in the same position 12 months from now, we are looking at a dire, dire, situation. And people should get angry.”

Herz mentions how the potential shortfall in fuel supplies has the natural gas utility, the electric utilities, regulators and legislators worried about the immediate future.

Indecision is the biggest problem right now. The utilities are in a difficult position because they are being pulled and pushed in various ways with options that come with real costs and risks—import natural gas, find renewable alternatives, wait for more Cook Inlet gas supplies and pledge to buy gas from a natural gas pipeline that might not be built.

There are economic and political problems with every choice because so much is unknown. Every decision will have an impact on ratepayers, perhaps for decades to come. If there ever was a situation that demands strong leadership from the governor, this is it.

The main thing missing from Herz’s summary is Alaska’s chief executive of indecision, Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

The governor should be leading the effort to find a solution that works. He isn’t.

This is not like making an announcement—as Dunleavy did in 2023, that he wants to cut the cost of electricity by 2030 to 10 cents a kilowatt hour—only to drop the subject forever when his energy task force found no way to make it happen.

And it’s not like the perennial promises that the gas line is closer than ever before. It’s much harder than that because immediate action is needed and there are many competing opinions about the course to take.

No account of the campaign to keep the lights on is complete without mentioning that the governor is missing in action.