Energy Secretary Chris Wright says it is ‘very possible’ the administration issues a loan for the project
DEADHORSE, Alaska—The Trump administration is considering leveraging the federal loan office the Biden administration used to fund dozens of green energy projects to kickstart a behemoth $44 billion pipeline project that would transport natural gas across Alaska.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Monday that his agency may issue a federal loan guarantee for the project, noting its economic and national security importance. Such a move would mark an abrupt departure from the Biden Energy Department’s approach—Biden officials in the loan office dished out 53 green energy loans worth more than $100 billion for electric vehicle, solar panel, wind turbine, and green hydrogen projects.
“It’s possible the Loan Program Office plays a role at the start of the project to launch just the Alaska part of the pipeline. I think it’s very possible that would happen,” Wright told reporters on the sidelines of an event he, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin attended in the northern village of Deadhorse, Alaska, near the proposed starting point of the pipeline.
“There’s tremendous interest in the gas from here, and that’s all the project needs,” he said. “Once you have off-takers, the financing is not an issue.”
During the Biden administration, the Loan Programs Office’s lending power skyrocketed to more than $240 billion. By comparison, the first Trump administration largely left the office dormant, only approving a single loan for a Georgia nuclear power plant project.
Wright’s comments signal he is prepared to use the beefed-up loan office to pursue President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda, rather than mirror the approach the first Trump administration took.
Wright also previously told the Free Beacon that he directed a review of Biden-era energy loans and suggested he could soon revoke some of those agreements, something that would free up dollars to pursue Trump’s priorities.
Tapping into federal funds, meanwhile, could be the boost needed to finally move the Alaska natural gas project forward after a seemingly never-ending string of delays and uncertainty. The 807-mile north-to-south pipeline was first proposed more than two decades ago, but has since faced a number of setbacks including failure to secure proper financing to get the project off the ground.
Trump has made the project a top priority of his aggressive energy agenda, directing the Department of the Interior to prioritize the development of Alaska’s natural gas reserves in a day-one executive order. “It will be truly spectacular. It’s all set to go,” he remarked during his joint address to Congress in March.
Signaling their intent to fulfill that mandate, Wright, Burgum, and Zeldin—all members of the White House National Energy Dominance Council—held the event Monday at Pump Station 1, the facility that feeds the 800-mile Trans-Alaska oil pipeline built in the 1970s.
The officials said the proposed natural gas project would be a twin pipeline traveling alongside the existing infrastructure.
The potential for a government-backed loan that Wright floated reaffirms the administration’s commitment to the project.
“President Trump is challenging us. He does not accept that it will take a decade to build an LNG pipeline,” Burgum said Monday. “He doesn’t accept it because he knows that part of American greatness is getting back to what we did before, which is building remarkable things with innovation, with speed, and with care. And the place where that can happen is right here.”
Burgum, like Wright, later signaled he would be open to allocating federal money to projects like the pipeline through a kind of sovereign wealth fund.
“It might make a lot of sense for us to get to make investments in industries that are strategic to our economy and to our national defense,” he told reporters. “That could make a lot of sense.”
If the project is developed and brought into service, it could create up to 10,000 construction jobs and 1,000 operational jobs, and generate tens of billions of dollars in gross domestic product for Alaska, according to the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, a state-owned developer that recently transferred ownership of the project to the privately owned company Glenfarne Alaska.
The pipeline would benefit Alaska through tax revenue, but feed an export facility in southern Alaska and mainly serve Asian allies. Top government officials from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan attended the event with the Trump officials in Deadhorse on Monday.
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