Inside Alaska's natural gas crisis, with a natural gas executive

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.