Dan Walker AK Author

Are we serious right now. Glenfarne put out a new letter yesterday, September 30, acting like the check cleared. Oval Office. Brendan Duval standing there. “$50 billion-plus” South Korean investment. Ready to accelerate to FID and construction. Adam Prestidge talking about putting Alaskans to work. Commercial deals at 13 million tonnes of the 16 they say they need. Same company that owns 75 percent. State of Alaska, through AGDC, still at 25. Read the letter. Then read the room. This is the same outfit that spent the summer writing hostage notes because Juneau would not come back into special session and hand them the property tax deal. Schedule delay. Cost increase. Like that was our problem to solve. ADN already reported their own people saying FID is still sitting on steps that have not happened, including a change to Alaska’s tax structure. The tax bill died. Now the press release reads like the capital showed up and the ask disappeared. It did not. Seoul’s own industry ministry said no decision has been made on whether to invest or how big. They are still reviewing commercial viability. Glenfarne’s letter even admits they still have to “finalize the investment structure” and finish the steps to FID. That is not money in the bank. That is a photo op with a maybe stapled to it. Nobody can read, or nobody wants to. So here is the part that should end the tax conversation. If Korean capital is actually coming in at $50 billion-plus on a project they keep pricing from the high 50s to $100 billion, there is no reason left to ask Alaskans for tax breaks, offsets, or a new special-session adjustment. Build it. Pay what you owe. Property tax, production tax, the regular bill. The state already put the asset in. We do not owe them a discount for showing up with somebody else’s money. And the 25 percent is not the payday people keep selling. You cannot make real money on a 25 percent stake in a $56 to $100 billion project if the state’s piece is something like $25 billion back over 30 years. That is not a windfall. That is getting your own money back slow, if you get it back, while the offtakers and the developer hold the long contracts. Construction seasons are not a fiscal plan. The only durable Alaska cut on the stacked product is a royalty, written before they pour concrete. Gas is one molecule. The carbon and the hydrogen are the other two, and that is where the federal credits and the “clean” upside get skimmed if Juneau does not set the rate. 45V, sequestration, clean-molecule branding. Same playbook. Developers and buyers collect the credit stack. Alaska gets the pipe, the tail risk, and a minority slice of cash flow. Legislature’s job is not another tax gift so Glenfarne can feel ready. It is a royalty on the carbon and the hydrogen, on top of what the gas already owes. Then they can build. No new adjustments. No hostage note. Pay the state and pour the steel, or stop telling us the letter means the project is real.