Drue Pearce: Prioritizing energy means prioritizing infrastructure

By DRUE PEARCE

In the early 1980s, I was a bank manager in Kotzebue, Alaska, 33 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Those were the days of handwritten checks, paper records, and hand-updated documents. When broadband brought high-speed internet to Alaska, all that paper went digital, and residents never looked back—until last month, when an act of nature took them offline again. 

A subsea fiber system from Prudhoe Bay to Nome began service in 2017, bringing high-speed internet service to North Slope and Northwest Arctic communities, US military assets, and Alaska’s North Slope oil fields. The system, owned by the private global communications corporation Quintillion, carries traffic for retail internet providers and government communications systems. 

In the last few years, however, two ice-scouring events have sliced the cable buried in the Beaufort Sea, knocking out service to the Northern and Western coasts of Alaska, including Kotzebue and the entire Northwest Arctic region. In June 2023, an iceberg – something only those living in the Arctic region of the US deal with – dragging along the seabed severed the broadband fiber cable that kept many parts of Alaska connected. It was thought to be a “once in a lifetime” cut, but then last month, it happened again.  

To their credit, Quintillion began working with scientific experts to better understand the unexpected offshore ice scouring in the Beaufort Sea immediately after the 2023 cable fault. At the time, they completed a challenging subsea repair to restore service, but the need for a resilient, redundant system in the future was clear. 

They determined that the most expedient alternative solution, should there be a future issue with the subsea cable, would be to build a terrestrial “land bridge” onshore across State of Alaska lands and the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska (NPR-A), from Utqiagvik to Prudhoe Bay, and create a “loop.” This would provide the imperative redundancy needed to protect the system’s operational efficiency.

Over a year ago, Quintillion started working with the Inupiat Community of the Arctic to apply for a FEMA Building Resilience in Communities grant to assist in funding the construction of the land bridge. BRIC grants are specifically for supporting communities as they build capacity and capability to reduce hazard risks.

Given Alaska’s role in our national defense, as home to the largest oil field in North America, and its significant energy production, a government investment in the system’s resiliency seems like a no-brainer. However, the window for awarding grants came and went last fall, and in a seemingly last kick to Alaska before he left office, the Biden administration identified the application for further review but then did nothing with it. 

President Biden’s war on Alaska began as soon as he took office. He sought to continuously lock up lands, shut down resource development — the lifeblood of the state’s economy — and restrict access to opportunity. In his final few days in office, Biden’s administration rolled out yet another swath of NPR-A regulations designed to create a wilderness area in a place specifically set aside for development and force his ideologies on Alaskans without considering how they would affect the state and its residents. And for that, the funding needed to bring resilient high-speed internet access back to North and Western Alaska sits in a holding pattern.

To the contrary, President Trump made it clear from day one that he understands the importance of Alaska to our country’s energy security and national security and has prioritized economic movement and development. In the three short weeks since his inauguration, he has gotten more done for the good of this country and the state I call home than in all of Biden’s four years. President Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are now in the position to move the FEMA BRIC grant forward and ensure the systems needed for energy development, national defense systems, and quality of life can be quickly brought back online and made resilient for the future.  

Mother Nature makes the Arctic a hard enough place to do business without having to worry about Uncle Sam’s hoops and red tape. We should encourage investment and welcome those who continue to innovate, drive progress, and create opportunities for Alaska and for the good of the country.

Drue Pearce served as deputy administrator of the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration at the U.S Department of Transportation, as a senior adviser to U.S. Department of the Interior Secretaries Gale Norton and Dirk Kempthorne, and as the federal coordinator at the Office of Federal Coordinator for Alaska Natural Gas Transportation Projects. She also served twice as the Alaska State Senate president and is now with Holland and Hart.