Mayor Josiah Patkotak kicks-off a panel with Twenty First Century Utilities executives at CERAWeek by S&P Global
The top of the world is open for business — and America's hyperscalers are noticing.
The Borough of North Slope stretches the entire northern edge of Alaska. It is larger than 22 states. It has a population of 10,000. It is, literally, the top of the world.
It is also the origin of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline — the industrial spine that has carried North Slope crude nearly 800 miles south to Valdez for fifty years.
For most of that time, the borough's role has been the same: tax the operators, collect the revenue, and watch the oil move south.
Josiah Patkotak, the 13th mayor of the North Slope Borough and the youngest in its history, is writing a new chapter.
By his own description "an Eskimo boy," he walked into office with a plan:
Turn stranded Arctic gas into the backbone of American AI infrastructure — and use the revenue to remake life for the 10,000 people who call North Slope home.
"We've been the benefactor of those property taxes over the years," Patkotak told a room of energy insiders at CERAWeek by S&P Global last week.
"But we've never really owned a project. When you're just a benefactor, that's one thing. But really owning it – that comes with a whole different tier of opportunities."
North Slope Power is his answer.
The Opportunity
The North Slope Borough sits atop one of the most productive oil fields in North American history — and one of its most overlooked energy problems.
Thirty trillion cubic feet of natural gas sit in known reserves beneath the slope. Almost none of it moves.
There is so much of it, and so few ways to get it to market, that operators are forced to reinject it back into underground reservoirs.
Alaska state law prohibits the gas from being flared.
This vast, stranded is a nuisance to industry, a "pest in their side," as Patkotak put it.
North Slope Power proposes to change that equation entirely.
The project, developed in partnership with Twenty First Century Utilities — a private investment firm led by Larry Kellerman and Peter Corsell — would build three gigawatts of gas-fired generation on the slope.
The target customers: hyperscale data centers and large industrial users.
North Slope isn’t the only outfit to see this opportunity:
Stax Capital Partners, a Wasilla-based startup, has already applied for a state permit to build a 50-megawatt Bitcoin mining operation on the slope – powered by stranded gas, at a site 30 miles south of Prudhoe Bay.
Nathaniel Herz of the Northern Journal has reported Stax’s CEO calling Alaska "the only place this makes sense, long term, for the industry."
North Slope Power is proposing sixty times that scale.
The region is already in the middle of a broader industrial resurgence.
ConocoPhillips' Willow project is on track for first production in 2029.
Santos' Pikka project is running ahead of schedule and expects to add nearly 20% to current North Slope output.
According to Alaska Public Radio, at an industry conference last fall, ConocoPhillips' Alaska lead said: "This is just the beginning. There's going to be probably a decade of build-out going on on the Slope."
The Math
North Slope Power’s 3 GW of generation would consume less than 5% of the gas currently being reinjected.
The fuel cost? "By far the lowest in North America," as Kellerman put it — priced on long-term contracted supply rather than the spot volatility of Henry Hub.
The project is targeting electricity produced at 7 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour, also contracted long-term – "as far as the eye can see," in Patkotak's words – insulated from market swings.
Kellerman, a nearly five-decade power industry veteran, noted that the cold climate delivers roughly 25% savings on energy relative to lower-48 alternatives, a direct benefit of natural pre-cooling for compute infrastructure.
"In my entire career, I have not seen an opportunity more compelling, more timely, and more valuable to society as a whole," Kellerman said.
The Vehicle
The North Slope Borough maintains a $1.3 billion permanent fund.
It recently adopted a direct investment policy enabling the permanent fund to take equity positions in projects within the region.
This transforms the borough’s role in the project from permitting authority into a capitalized co-investor with a balance sheet and a track record.
The financial structure also opens the door to federal leverage – carbon sequestration credits, loan guarantees, and the broader architecture of domestic energy dominance that the current administration has made central to its industrial agenda.
The Mission
The revenue will be transformational for the eight communities scattered across the slope – remote villages currently running on diesel, with little or no road connections to the outside world.
Among the infrastructure projects envisioned are microgrids for each community, meaningfully lowering the cost and improving the reliability of power for residents.
For Patkotak, the stakes are more fundamental than infrastructure.
"It's the long-term plan of making sure that our people can afford to live in the traditional homelands that we've hunted for generations," he said, "and be able to afford to continue to do that over the years."
The Long Game
The initial 3 GW build is explicitly framed as Phase One. The project is designed to scale to 10 GW.
Corsell noted that the largest technology companies are already thinking about 20 to 50 gigawatts in the next five to ten years – and North Slope is one of the only places in the United States where that figure is physically conceivable.
Kellerman and Corsell also outlined a subsequent phase addressing what they called an "existential power supply crisis":
A transmission corridor from the North Slope south to the rail belt – Anchorage to Fairbanks, home to 75% of Alaska's population – where Cook Inlet natural gas is running out fast enough that state officials are debating whether Alaska will have to import fuel from abroad to keep the lights on through winter.
North to the Future
The Borough of North Slope has powered the United States for fifty years.
The mayor flew 3,500 miles to CERAWeek in Houston last week to make his pitch for how it’s ready to do even more.
We listened to the whole pitch. and quite honestly … we were sold.
We won't name names – but major customers prospects were in the audience with us, and they were too.
Go Deeper: One reason why we are so bullish on Alaska? The pitch we heard from Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy earlier this year. Read our story.
