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Economic Forum: Positioning Alaska For Growth
This summary is a recap of the information presented by the speakers and the responses provided during the Q&A session. It is not an official record, transcript, or position statement. The content reflects only the views and statements made by the individual presenters and participants at the time of the forum. It should not be interpreted as representing the official views, opinions, policies, or positions of the organization, its leadership, board members, staff, or affiliates.
ANCHORAGE — In the dim, wood-paneled glow of the Petroleum Club, a roomful of Alaskans gathered last week to confront an uncomfortable truth: our state, once a symbol of untamed abundance, has been idling in neutral. For a decade, from 2015 to 2025, Alaska’s gross domestic product has limped along at an anemic 0.4 percent annual growth, according to the state Department of Labor. Our population, that hardy mix of pioneers and transplants, has been shrinking — a slow bleed of outmigration driven by high costs, an underfunded education system, and the gnawing sense that opportunity lies elsewhere. Yet here, on January 15, 2026, amid the scent of leather chairs and the faint hum of natural-gas heaters, the “Positioning Alaska for Growth” forum convened by Commonwealth North offered a flicker of defiance: not grand manifestos, but pragmatic blueprints for reinvention.
Moderated by Diane Hirshberg, director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage, the event unfolded as a series of crisp 10-minute talks from five speakers — experts in energy, resources, Native corporations, fiscal policy, and broader trends — followed by a probing Q&A and a networking reception.
It felt less like a pep rally than a diagnostic session: How does a place blessed with $1 trillion in untapped minerals, vast fisheries, and enough natural gas to power a nation extract itself from stagnation?
Energy – Curtis Thayer, Alaska Energy Authority
Curtis Thayer, executive director of the Alaska Energy Authority since 2019, kicked off with the forum’s most tangible lifeline: energy infrastructure, the invisible scaffold holding Alaska’s economy aloft. Natural gas and oil still fuel 80 percent of the Railbelt grid, the electrified spine serving three-quarters of Alaskans, but renewables — hydro, wind, biomass — now chip in 30 percent, buoyed by federal incentives. Thayer, a steady presence with the measured cadence of an engineer, painted AEA not as a relic of the oil boom but as a forward-leaning force. The agency owns Bradley Lake Hydro, the state’s largest hydroelectric project, churning out power at a bargain 4 cents per kilowatt-hour — a stark contrast to the 7-to-8-cent sting of natural gas or the 9.6 cents from wind farms like the one on Fire Island.
But the real story, Thayer argued, lies in the unglamorous upgrades: transmission lines, those 50-year-old veins of copper snaking through forests and fjords, vulnerable to wildfires like the 2019 Swan Lake blaze that blacked out the Kenai Peninsula for four months and saddled utilities with $12 million in extra fuel costs. AEA has stepped in, acquiring and modernizing lines, while pushing for a Railbelt Transmission Organization to end the “pancaking” of tariffs among fragmented utilities — a bureaucratic tangle that stifles efficiency from Homer to Fairbanks. In rural Alaska, where diesel generators hum in 193 isolated communities, the Power Cost Equalization program subsidizes rates up to 75 cents per kilowatt-hour from an endowment (not the general fund), saving $47 million annually but straining as urban prices rise. Deferred maintenance on 400 bulk-fuel tanks — relics from the 1970s, rusting near rivers — tallies a billion-dollar backlog; Thayer hailed a rare bipartisan win under the new administration, with $350 million pledged over three years to replace a third of them.
Thayer’s vision crystallized in two shovel-ready megaprojects: the $342 million Bradley Lake Expansion, diverting glacial melt to boost output by 50 percent and offset 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas by 2031; and the $413 million Cook Inlet PowerLink, a 38-mile subsea cable linking southern and central Railbelt regions with 200 megawatts of bidirectional flow by 2032. “Transmission lines aren’t sexy,” he quipped later in Q&A, “but if you’re sitting in the dark, they’re your biggest priority.” It’s a reminder that Alaska’s energy future isn’t about flashy moonshots but hardening the grid against isolation and volatility — especially as federal priorities shift from renewables under the prior administration to diesel reliability now.
Access to Resources – Jon Bittner, MDFGlobal
Jon Bittner, external affairs manager for MDF Global’s Alaska operations, offered a counterpoint from the ground up: If fiscal pipes are clogged, why not unclog the earth itself? Alaska’s subsurface brims with $1 trillion in untapped critical minerals — copper for wiring the green grid, zinc for galvanizing steel, rare earths for magnets in wind turbines and missiles — yet they account for just 5 percent of GDP, hobbled by isolation and permitting snarls. Bittner’s slides, laced with maps of fieldwork frontiers like Grizzly, Tok, Rampart, and graphite prospects, invoked a 2025 report titled Hype, Hope, and Reality to temper exuberance with geology. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 2023 critical minerals list — a roll call of 60 elements from aluminum to zirconium, including cobalt, lithium, nickel, and the lanthanides like neodymium and dysprosium — overlaps heavily with Alaska’s geology, but prioritization hinges on hard metrics: commodity prices, processing bottlenecks (think China’s near-monopoly on rare earth refining), local prospectivity, by-product yields from existing mines, historical data troves, and investor appetite amid volatile capital markets.
The surge in mineral prices, Bittner explained, stems from this perfect storm: geopolitical jitters accelerating the energy transition, from electric vehicles gobbling lithium and graphite to defense tech demanding antimony and tungsten. Bottlenecks abroad — supply-chain chokepoints in Indonesia’s nickel or Australia’s lithium — inflate spot prices, while U.S. subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act dangle billions for domestic sourcing. Alaska’s pitch? Tier-1 prospects like those in the Rampart sequence, where historical assays hint at world-class deposits, but only if infrastructure catches up: the West Susitna Road Access Project, or the Alaska LNG Pipeline to slash energy costs for remote drills. MDF’s focus — Priority 1 minerals like copper and graphite, Priority 2 like zinc and magnesium — isn’t hype, Bittner stressed, but a roadmap: Leverage federal sentiment, where access to capital flows to “shovel-ready” sites, to turn hype into haul trucks.
Native Leadership – Sheri Buretta, Chugach Native Corporation
Buretta Presentaiton – PositionAK4Growth
Sheri Buretta, chair of the Chugach Alaska Corporation’s board and a fixture on the Alaska Federation of Natives since 1998, brought the Indigenous lens to bear with a talk that wove history, resilience, and forward momentum into a tapestry of quiet power. Born of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), more than 50 years ago, Native corporations like Chugach have evolved from land stewards into diversified powerhouses, investing in energy, industrial services, government contracting, and beyond. Their revenues — Chugach’s alone historically topping $1 billion — fuel not just shareholder dividends and careers but scholarships, cultural preservation, and professional growth for a community that honors tradition even as it competes on the global stage. “Alaska is our home,” Buretta said, her voice steady with the gravitas of a former University of Alaska regent, “the world is our workplace.” Chugach employs nearly 5,000 across Alaska, the Lower 48, and abroad; collectively, ANCs support 27,500 jobs worldwide, turning “profits with a purpose” into engines of self-determination.
Yet Buretta didn’t shy from the headwinds. The biggest recent barriers? Political attacks on the federal 8(a) program, which empowers Native-owned businesses in government contracting. She pinned hopes on a 2026 land exchange with the federal government, one that could broaden Chugach’s carbon-offset initiatives — already generating significant revenue from coal retirement — while reclaiming ownership of sacred cultural sites. That program, she noted, has funded a $30 million educational endowment and bolstered economic and ecological initiatives, proving that growth and stewardship can coexist. Emerging opportunities abound: Chugach’s oil-spill prevention and response contracts along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System align with Native values of guardianship, offering steady jobs while positioning the corporation to scale up for LNG development. “Every Alaskan should focus on clearing state and federal hurdles for LNG,” Buretta urged, highlighting its potential to unlock vast employment, boost state revenues, and address Southcentral’s gas shortages — a legacy-builder akin to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline itself.
Looking ahead, Buretta called for spurring growth through targeted advocacy: champion the Alaska LNG pipeline, seal the land exchange to unlock carbon potential, and guide legislators on federal programs that advance self-determination and agency efficiency. Initiatives like the “Village in the City” and Chugach Museum underscore cultural vitality, but her vision centered on people — positioning Native talent to lead these corporations for the next 50 years and beyond. In the Q&A, that optimism bloomed personally: Spring, she said, is just around the corner, and the post-COVID generation is emerging “like butterflies into our workforce.” With her own daughter, Anastasia, among them, Buretta sees boundless opportunities in a cohort battle-tested by pandemic isolation, ready to infuse fresh energy into Alaska’s renewal. It’s a reminder that Native leadership isn’t just economic — it’s the heartbeat of a state reimagining itself through the eyes of those who’ve stewarded it longest.
Fiscal Policy – Alexei Painter, Legislative Finance Division
Painter Presentation – 1-15-26 CWN Presentation
At the heart of Painter’s analysis was what he termed the “Alaska Disconnect,” a structural quirk that turns economic expansion into a fiscal trap. Unlike most states, where a booming economy fattens tax coffers through income, sales, or property levies, Alaska’s revenue engine is oddly decoupled from its own vitality. The Permanent Fund’s percent-of-market-value (POMV) draw, the single largest unrestricted general fund (UGF) source, floats serenely above the fray, pegged to investment returns rather than GDP churn. Oil, the old reliable, tells a bleaker tale: Even as production climbs from 517,800 barrels per day in fiscal year 2027 to a projected 659,900 by 2035 — a 27.4 percent surge — petroleum taxes are forecast to dip 14 percent. Why? Painter says that carried-forward deductions, ballooning operating costs, and the Gross Value Reduction provision, which slashes taxes for up to seven years after first oil in a new field. Legacy behemoths like Prudhoe Bay, more profitable in their dotage, continue their inexorable decline, offsetting gains from upstarts. Total UGF petroleum revenue? A meager 15.6 percent bump over the decade, as forecasted prices edge from $62 per barrel to $73 — barely keeping pace with inflation.
This disconnect sharpens outside oil’s orbit. Alaska forgoes a state income tax, leaning instead on excise taxes that capture only slivers of broader activity, plus corporate income taxes that trickle in at 3-5% to the general fund via spillovers. Painter illustrated with a thought experiment: Imagine 100,000 remote workers — coders and consultants lured by the northern lights and no payroll bite — decamping to the state. Their untaxed wages wouldn’t juice state coffers directly; gains might come from heightened corporate taxes on local vendors or excise hits on extra beer and boats. Local property taxes would rise, easing borough budgets, but the state? It would foot a steeper bill. Those newcomers and their school-age kids would swell K-12 enrollment, partially offset by mandated local contributions but still straining the general fund. Roads would groan under more tires; in Anchorage or Juneau, policing stays municipal, but in unincorporated sprawls like the Mat-Su or Fairbanks, Alaska State Troopers — a state expense — would stretch thin. “Economic growth outside oil brings more costs than revenue,” Painter said flatly, underscoring how the system’s oil-centric wiring leaves non-petroleum booms as net drains. Sales taxes, volatile and regressive, hit consumers hardest in a high-cost state; corporate taxes, while progressive on paper, evade easy scaling without broader bases. Income taxes, absent here, would spread the load more equitably but remain political kryptonite.
What sets Alaska apart, Painter noted with a wry nod to his counterparts in the Lower 48, is this very eccentricity — a envy-inducing anomaly. “Why are you complaining?” his colleagues rib. “You’re the only state without an income tax that pays your citizens to live there, and you’re broke?” It’s no shortage of financial resources, he countered, but a political calculus: how to marshal the Permanent Fund’s $80 billion corpus and oil windfalls without broad taxes that might stem outmigration or fund the basics. Other states dream of such “problems” — sovereign wealth without the income-tax drag — yet Alaska’s setup demands diversification that’s easier preached than piped.
Larry Persily – Trends
Larry Persily, the Alaska’s veteran energy and fiscal policy analyst, dispensed with slides altogether, opting instead for the unvarnished candor of a man who’s tracked the state’s fiscal fevers for decades. At 74, with a gravelly voice honed by years of chasing oil headlines, he leaned into the forum’s call for optimism with the enthusiasm of a prospector eyeing fool’s gold. “I haven’t been positive since I was tested for strep 30 years ago,” he quipped. Yet Persily, a onetime deputy commissioner in the Department of Revenue, circled back to the “Alaska disconnect” with a parable from his bureaucratic past: the ghost of a long-forgotten aluminum smelter pitch in Valdez, where executives dangled jobs in exchange for free royalty gas and a state-built pipeline — a deal that would have saddled the stateJuneau with endless costs for schools, ambulances, and maintenance, all while yielding zero tax revenue from an LLC shell. “We’re gonna lose money,” he recalled firing off in a letter. “So, no thanks.” It’s the same trap, he implied, that ensnares today’s boosters: growth that blooms on the ground but withers in the budget.
True reinvention, Persily allowed, demands investment — the kind Alaskans resist dipping into their own pockets for, preferring the sweet illusion of free lunch. “Food that I didn’t pay for tastes better than the food I paid for,” he deadpanned. Attracting outsiders, both capital and flesh-and-blood transplants, is the rub; net out-migration has outpaced inflows for years, per Department of Labor tallies, leaving births to stanch the bleed. “We’re not getting new blood,” he said. “Nothing against those of us here today, but we’re not the leaders of tomorrow.”
Inevitably, the conversation veered to oil’s capricious throne, with a question on Venezuela’s thawed sanctions and the specter of cheap crude flooding markets anew. Persily dismissed it with the finality of a geologist waving off a dry well. “I’m here to tell you, I don’t think Venezuela’s gonna do squat to Alaska North Slope oil prices,” he declared. The market, he noted, has barely blinked at the prospect of a few hundred thousand barrels a day of Venezuelan “gunk” trickling back online — a pittance against Iran’s 2 million-plus, whose disruptions (or mere whispers thereof) jolt prices like a seismic aftershock. Witness last week’s frenzy: Iranian tensions spiked benchmarks, only for a Trumpian tweet vowing “peace in Iran” to send them tumbling. “I didn’t know the markets were that damn gullible,” Persily marveled, “but they obviously are.” Geography seals the insulation: Venezuela’s heavy sour grades feed Gulf Coast refineries purpose-built for them, a world apart from the West Coast’s lighter Alaskan stream, sourced from Prudhoe Bay, California fields, Canada, and the Dakotas. “Venezuela oil never comes to the West Coast,” he said. “We’re a separate market here.” Lower-48 pump prices might dip, but Alaska’s royalties, budgets, and fuel gauges? Untouched. The real wild card remains the Middle East — Iran chief among them — where chaos could fatten deficits’ foes or, in quieter turns, expose the Slope’s frailties anew.
Commonwealth North’s executive director, Ross Johnston, sealed the evening with a benediction that echoed the forum’s hard-won wisdom. Thanking the panelists for their “thoughtful answers” and the legislators grinding away in Juneau, he invoked the visionaries of the past, whose generation forged Alaska not for quick wins but for “generations ahead.” Alaskans, Johnston observed with a knowing smile, harbor a perennial hunger for the “panacea, the silver bullet, the one giant thing that will save us”—yet true revival demands “baby steps that will take us that big leap forward,” incremental moves to reclaim the robust education and boundless opportunities of our state.