Northern Journal

Two of the most powerful political leaders in the world met in Anchorage last week. Northern Journal staff was out of town, but Anchorage Daily News reporter Zach Hughes was on site. In this episode, he gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how the Trump-Putin summit developed, and how it all went down — from reporters assembling on school buses to stealth bomber flyovers.

Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has been in the news in recent weeks for her decisive vote on President Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill." She's also been featured prominently on national television shows, radio and podcasts, as part of a promotional tour for her new book: Far From Home.

In this episode, Murkowski stops in to the Northern Journal podcast. We start by talking about her new book and her style of politics, and then, around 17:55, we get into her 'yes' vote on Trump's legislation.

The episode includes some discussion of an opinion piece by Murkowski's U.S. Senate colleague from Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul; that piece is here.

A reminder: If you like what you hear on the Northern Journal podcast, the best way to support it is through a paid membership; you can sign up at northernjournal.com. We're also always looking for advertisers on the podcast and website — you can reach publisher Nat Herz at nat@northernjournal dot com. Thanks for listening.

This episode delves into a secret corner of Alaska's oil and gas industry — an obscure, complicated but important realm where there are billions of dollars at stake. Our two guests have written a newly published paper for the Alaska Law Review that examines the future of the trans-Alaska pipeline — what happens when it's ready to be decommissioned, who's going to pay, and how the state could work to make sure it's not left holding the bag.

Catherine Rocchi is regulatory lead at the Alaska Public Interest Research Group, a watchdog organization that includes the oil and gas industry in its portfolio. Phil Wight is an energy historian and an assistant professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

If you live in Alaska, you likely have some awareness of Captain James Cook — at least because his name is on one of Anchorage's largest hotels, along with the body of water just offshore of the city, Cook Inlet.

A new biography, The Wide Wide Sea, recounts the entirety of Cook's expedition that took him to Alaska, and puts the explorer in a new context that I think many Northern Journal listeners will appreciate. In this episode, we hear from the book's author, Hampton Sides, who conducted some of his research in Anchorage. 

It's been a rough few years for Alaska's fishing industry. Oversupply, competition from farmed and Russian salmon, inflation and rising interest rates — all of these things have combined to put a real hurt on fishermen and processing companies.

As the summer salmon season kicks off, there are some glimmers of hope that things are turning around. But there are also still some big questions and challenges looming over the industry. We break them down here, courtesy of an all-star group of guests:

• Norm Pillen, president of a processing company in Sitka that's cooperatively owned by fishermen, the Seafood Producers Cooperative. (You can buy fish directly from there, here.)

• Erick Sabo, a Bristol Bay skipper and board president of a regional fisheries marketing group called the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association.

• Rachel Sapin, a longtime reporter for industry publication Intrafish who covers Alaska processing businesses and other stories.

Feedback? Email host Nat Herz at nat[at]northernjournal.com. We're also recruiting advertisers for this podcast; if you're interested, drop Nat a line.

We're excited to revive the Northern Journal podcast for its second season. Have ideas for guests and subjects? Email host Nat Herz at nat[at]northernjournal.com.

If you like what you hear, please consider a paid Northern Journal membership.

Now, for the good stuff:

If you're listening to this podcast, I'm willing to bet you've heard about the Alaska LNG export project — a $44 billion, state-sponsored megadevelopment that would pipe, liquefy and ship natural gas from Alaska's North Slope for customers in Asia. The project has gotten a boost from President Donald Trump, whose administration is pushing Asian allies to sign on, and it's been in the news recently. But it's also been in the news more sporadically for decades...and it's still just a hypothetical project, not a real one. In this episode of the Northern Journal podcast, we dig into the proposal, examine its prospects and break down the obstacles it still faces.

Joining us is Richard Pratt, a veteran LNG industry player who recently analyzed the Alaska LNG project for a trade publication called RBN Energy. Check out his analysis here:

https://rbnenergy.com/road-to-alaska-are-alaska-lng-strengths-enough-to-outweigh-its-costs-challenges-of-construction

There's a little bit of insider lingo and discussion, but if you bear with us, we try to explain most of the concepts and acronyms. To help, here are a few terms you might hear:

LNG: liquefied natural gas, a fuel used mainly by power plants to generate electricity
FEED: front end engineering design, a study phase used to develop and define costs so that investors are more comfortable putting money into a development
AGDC: Alaska Gasline Development Corp., a state-owned agency that, until recently, has led efforts to advance the LNG project
Glenfarne: Glenfarne Group is a privately held developer based in New York and Houston that recently took over efforts to advance the LNG project from AGDC

Anchorage's new mayor, Suzanne LaFrance, has pledged to fix what she describes as a broken city hall. 

The team that she's hired so far is a group of technocratic policy nerd all-stars, and their three year term will function as a kind of test: Can an administration rooted in professional competence and policy expertise make meaningful progress in solving some of the deep-rooted, intractable problems facing the city? Namely, its homelessness crisis, but also the housing crunch, a looming spike in energy costs and the always annoying inability of snowplows to clear out streets within 15 minutes of a snowfall.

LaFrance joined the Northern Journal podcast for an hourlong interview on her background and the priorities and vision for her administration.

If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, the best thing you can do is to buy a paid subscription to Northern Journal. I'm also looking for underwriters and advertisers for this show — you can reach me at nat[at]northernjournal[dot]com. Thanks for listening.

There may not be any subject as serious as the one the last episode of this podcast covered — the emotional issue of salmon bycatch. So, now it's time to balance out that seriousness with frivolousness. And we mean serious frivolousness.

To be precise: This episode is about mammoth resurrection. And the possible transplantation and reintroduction of other charismatic megafauna to Alaska on a massive scale.

For this story to make sense, you have to read the original Northern Journal story. We've got a special guest host, Ephraim Froehlich. Apologies in advance for the puns.

If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, the best thing you can do is to buy a paid subscription to Northern Journal. I'm also looking for underwriters and advertisers for this show — you can reach me at nat[at]northernjournal[dot]com. Thanks for listening.

If you listen to this podcast, you probably know about "bycatch," the accidental harvest of fish that aren't boats' target species. The issue — specifically, of salmon bycatch by Bering Sea whitefish trawlers — has become an all-consuming debate for some Alaska commercial and subsistence fishermen, along with leaders of Washington-based seafood companies and Southwest Alaska tribes.

This episode features a rare interview with two officials from Bering Sea trawling-related businesses, Hunter Berns of Bering North and John Henderschedt of Phoenix Processor Limited Partnership. In it, we talk through the industry's history and operations — and the potential impacts of tighter regulations being considered by federal policymakers.

If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, the best thing you can do is to buy a paid subscription to Northern Journal. I'm also looking for underwriters and advertisers for this show — you can reach me at nat[at]northernjournal[dot]com. Thanks for listening.

For the past two years, we've been hearing about the impending shortage of the locally produced natural gas that we use to heat our homes and generate our electricity in Southcentral Alaska. But there's been little concrete information about how utilities plan to solve the problem. Now, we're hearing that supply gaps are developing sooner than originally expected — as soon as two winters from now. This recent piece from Erin McKittrick is a good overview.

In this episode of the Northern Journal podcast, we hear from one of the biggest players in the debate about what comes next. John Sims is the president of Enstar, which sells natural gas to households and commercial customers in Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula and the Mat-Su. Enstar is privately owned, which means that some folks have been skeptical about its motives. Sims addresses those questions, plus many more, in this episode about the future of urban Alaska's energy economy.

If you like what you're hearing, the best thing you can do is to buy a paid subscription to Northern Journal. I'm also looking for underwriters and advertisers for this show — you can reach me at nat[at]northernjournal[dot]com. Thanks for listening.