BRADNERS' ALASKA LEGISLATIVE DIGEST

Salmon season wraps up Alaska’s 2018 summer salmon fishery is about wrapped up. The harvest will be well below the preseason forecasts due to unexpected timing of some runs, which disrupted fishing. Sockeye catches are coming in on target at about 50 million fish but pink and silver harvests are below expectations. Bristol Bay had its second-best sockeye harvest, however. Fall fisheries pick up statewide With summer over the state’s busy fall fisheries are getting underway. Harvesters in Southeast are…

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Pogo Mine sold by Sumitomo Australia-based Northern Star Resources Ltd. is purchasing the producing Pogo gold mine east of Fairbanks from Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. and Sumitomo Corp., two Japanese companies that developed and owned the mine. A sales price of $260 million was confirmed. The deal is expected to close in October. Pogo has been a very successful undertaking, overcoming obstacles in developing an underground mine in a remote location north of Delta in 2006. The mine produces about…

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Latest Nenana Basin well is dry Tough break for Doyon and Cook Inlet Region, partners in the latest well in the Nenana Basin, Totchaket #1. The well is 20 miles north of the city of Nenana. Drilling to 11,225 feet was completed July 5, but no commercial oil or gas was found. In its monthly newsletter to shareholders CIRI said, “While Totchaket #1 did not discover commercial quantities of gas or oil, the well encountered multiple gas shows and CIRI…

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Military, tourism lifts Fairbanks this year Its jobs are still down from 2015 but Fairbanks is enjoying a mini-boom in home construction this year, lifting construction employment, with most of this in the North Pole community east of the Interior city. About 300 new residential housing units are needed for new Air Force personnel and families moving to Eielson Air Force Base with the two new F-35 squadrons arriving in 2019 and 2020. The Air Force said about 900 units…

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Is Walker being squeezed between Begich, Dunleavy? On the governor’s race the street talk in Alaska is that Democrat Mark Begich is expanding his support base on the liberal left side of the slate while Republican Mike Dunleavy on holding his conservative voters on the right, and that independent Bill Walker, in the middle, is getting squeezed. Most of the betting is on Dunleavy being the state’s next governor. However, this is really too volatile to realistically predict. What is…

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More LNG storage in Fairbanks Construction is proceeding in Fairbanks on a $52.5 million liquefied natural gas storage tank for the Interior Gas Utility with the project on track for completion in late 2019. Meanwhile, IGU’s board approved a contract for engineering on a second, smaller LNG tank at North Pole, with a preliminary cost estimate of $12 million. Completion of the second tank is also expected in late 2019. The tanks will allow IGU to buy more gas during…

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Fuel shipment by sea to slope Crowley Fuel delivered a bulk load of diesel by barge to the North Slope in late August, the first marine fuel shipment to the slope in 20 years. Two million gallons were delivered to Colville Enterprises, a fuel distributor on the slope. The barge shipment landed an amount of fuel that would have required delivery by 200 trips by tank truck up the Dalton Highway. State officials have cited the safety and environmental risks…

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Opposition mounts to state health authority A proposed State Health Authority is picking up opposition. The plan seeks efficiencies and reductions in health care costs by combining all health plans that are state-funded under one large state-managed plan. The pushback is coming from private health plan consortiums that manage public and private plans, who say they are negotiating better deals with health providers than a large state-run health authority could. Proponents of a state authority cite similar authorities in Washington…

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Alaska’s Permanent Fund will pay $2.93 billion to the state General Fund next year, up from $2.72 billion paid this year, Fund managers said. While that sounds good, in reality it mainly covers built-in cost increases in the budget such as for rising health care and pension costs. The payment, under the new percent-of-market-value payout rule, is now confirmed for Fiscal Year 2020, the state budget year beginning July 1, 2019. This is still important because for the first time…

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