Alaska's oil revival sparks a new energy rush Into the Arctic

CrzyLngPwd 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Does that mean the US won't try to annex Canada and Greenland, after all?

cyberax an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's important to keep in mind the scale. The US is producing around 15 million barrels of oil per day.

The projects mentioned in the article, combined, would be less than 6 months of the US production.

It's important for the locals in Alaska, but it's not going to change anything globally. Except maybe killing off a few endangered species and damaging the fragile ecosystem. But that's a small price to pay for oil companies' profits.

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lazide 35 minutes ago | parent [-]

Even close to 6 months of US capacity is huge.

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cyberax 11 minutes ago | parent [-]

It is. But also not game-changing. And we don't have an infinite number of wildlife preserves that we can throw under the bus.

Arctic development is also expensive, and even the planned projects would have been impractical without already-existing infrastructure.

	▲	lazide 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		By that definition almost nothing is game changing? The US is one of the most oil hungry countries on the planet, and even 3 months supply is a quarter. That would definitely move the needle on prices!

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throwaway5752 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The oil industry is dying and we are destroying the planet and a delicate ecosystem to harvest non-renewable energy. It should stay in the ground and be saved for future generations for an emergency, not to just power grossly oversized vehicles and social media content generation to manipulate people into buying things.

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rnvd1298 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What a truly amazing coincidence that failed Alaskan projects that can supply energy to Asian "allies" without maritime choke points become profitable again!

Just as the Hormuz double blockade is implemented and extended. The current peace talks are just theater. Expect new "peace talks" every two weeks for years to come.

Putin, Trump and the fracking mafia will be very happy.

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866-RON-0-FEZ an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Something's gotta power all those new AI data centers with massive capacity and it isn't wind and solar.

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3eb7988a1663 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The Ember 2026 report[0] shows that 75% of new power generation in 2025 was from solar. Solar + wind were 99% of new generation capacity. Fossil fuel generation dropped for one of the first times ever (historical reductions were typically due to structural reasons like COVID or recession). In a first, renewable sources made more for the planet than coal.

Renewables are absolutely going to be powering the future. Recent events have done nothing but accelerate the transition as countries are going to run to reduce their petroleum dependencies.

[0] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-...

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soperj an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Actually lately it's been Hydro and Solar.[0] A little of natural gas, and thankfully a ton less coal.

[0] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/soaring-solar-and-a-...

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rayiner 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Leveling up civilization and moving up the tech tree requires orders of magnitude more energy.

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skybrian an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's unlikely to be oil either. Sometimes it's natural gas.

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nicoburns 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It really ought to be solar+batteries. It'd be slightly more expensive to build up-front than oil-based solutions, but probably not much and the companies building these data centers have the money to pay for that.

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yogthos an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

not in a petrostate anyways

	▲	antonvs an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Right, under Trump the US has become a full-blown petrostate. We may as well start calling him the Emir.