Welcome

Farmers do better with Mat-Su meat plant in private hands Privatization of the former state-owned Mt. McKinley Meat and Sausage slaughterhouse in Palmer last year is proving successful and is leading to rapid growth in the state’s small barley-growing and cattle ranching industries. Barley farmers in the Delta area planted 5,500 acres and harvested 239,000 bushels last year, the best production in a decade, according to newly-released U.S. Dept. of Agriculture statistics. The number of beef cattle being raised also…

Read More Read More

Interior plans accelerated reviews for ANWR leasing The U.S. Interior Department will kick off its environmental review of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge leasing using the department’s new policy of completing an EIS within one year and limiting it to 300 pages. In the past EIS documents have exceeded 1,000 pages and have taken several years. If the EIS is expedited, however, it may provide openings for inevitable lawsuits led by U.S. environmental groups. One group, The Wilderness Society, already sees…

Read More Read More

Healy 2 coal plant to start up Golden Valley Electric Association of Fairbanks will begin test- ring the 50 Megawatt Healy 2 coal plant at Healy in June and hope to have it fully operational in September, officials told a legislative committee in Juneau March 6. Healy 2 has had a lengthy retro t after being built originally by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority in the late 1980s to test new clean-coal technology. GVEA subsequently purchased the plant….

Read More Read More

The job-loss numbers shrink each month. In January, employment was down an estimated 0.5 percent. December was 1 percent; November was 0.9 percent; October was 1.3 percent. If the trend continues things will level out this spring and perhaps start growing again, but it will be slow. All the major occupations, oil and gas, construction, professional and business services, retail, etc. continue to decline but at much slower rates. Health care is the exception, with strong growth. In January it…

Read More Read More

China LNG deal for real? Independent expert says yes, maybe A China expert has been retained by the Legislative Affairs Council to give legislators an independent assessment of the hoped-for Chinese investment and purchasing deal being negotiated for Alaska lique ed natural gas. In presentations so far to state legislators Dr. Wenran Jiang of the University of Alberta, basically validates the potential for the pending deal and what Gov. Bill Walker and officials at Alaska Gasline Development Corp. have been…

Read More Read More

Alaska’s natural resource industries are worried about a voter initiative that would create a complex new permitting system for construction projects near streams or other water bodies. “Save Our Salmon,” the ballot initiative, is being opposed in court by the state of Alaska. The state says that only the Legislature can make decisions on allocation of state resources, which is what the ballot proposition would do, state attorneys argue. A state Superior Court has approved the proposal going on the…

Read More Read More

Business booms at Anchorage’s airport, driven by cargo Business activity continues to grow at Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage. Alaska Airlines’ new $40 million maintenance hanger is in construction; a Request For Proposals will go out this spring for a new 150-plus room hotel on the airport premises; $100 million in various other airport improvements are planned this year; and new concessions are planned. That’s the word from airport manager Jim Szczesniak, delivered Feb. 20 to the Transportation Committee…

Read More Read More

Alaska wages dropped in third quarter Alaska wages declined 3.6 percent in the third quarter of 2017, according to state Department of Labor and Workforce Development data released Feb 15. Employers paid $4.5 billion in wages during the quarter. The decline is an effect of the recession. Nearly 90 percent of the wage loss was in three regions: Anchorage, the Fairbanks North Star Borough and the North Slope Borough. This last was mainly in oil wages paid to oil workers…

Read More Read More

Trilogy Metals completes Preliminary Feasibility Study for Arctic deposit Trilogy Metals completed a Preliminary Feasibility Study Feb. 20 for development of its Arctic copper/ zinc deposit in the Ambler Mining District of the western Brooks Range. The study estimated a $779.6 million initial capital investment with $845.5 million needed over the life of the mine. A 10,000 tonne- per-year surface mine is proposed using conventional truck-and-shovel mining methods. (A “tonne,” the unit commonly used in Canada’s mineral industry, is 2,200…

Read More Read More

Mat-Su has new hopes for federal grant to complete rail extension to port The Matanuska-Susitna Borough has hopes for a federal infrastructure grant that could complete the partly-build rail track extension from the Alaska Railroad’s main track to the borough’s Port MacKenzie, on upper Cook Inlet. Borough officials met late last summer with U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, a meeting arranged by Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, and have since learned that the project was ranked high in the U.S. DOT…

Read More Read More