North Slope Borough pitches giant gas power plant near Prudhoe Bay

The North Slope Borough is betting that Prudhoe Bay can become more than an oil field. In Houston last month, borough leaders and Twenty First Century Utilities promoted North Slope Power, a proposed gas-fired utility they say could turn more than 35 trillion cubic feet of proven North Slope reserves into electricity for data centers, industry and, eventually, the Railbelt grid.

The pitch goes beyond another power plant. If it is built, the project could bring a new tax base, construction work and long-term operating jobs to a region that has long leaned on oil-field activity and public spending. It also could give North Slope communities and industrial users a more reliable local power source, while creating a way to use gas that would otherwise remain stranded or serve only limited on-site needs.

Mayor Josiah Patkotak, who is serving his first term and grew up in Barrow, is being used as one of the project’s faces as the borough tries to persuade investors and policymakers that the Arctic can host a new kind of utility. The CERAWeek session described North Slope Power as designed to serve colocated AI data centers and other industrial load while also sending electricity south into the Railbelt, a sign that borough leaders are pitching the project as a statewide energy asset, not just a Prudhoe Bay development.

That scale raises the central question: who pays, who profits and how long would it take? The project would have to clear Arctic engineering challenges, permitting, financing, transmission planning and environmental review, all in a place where winter conditions, distance and infrastructure gaps already drive up costs. Concentrating so much generation near Prudhoe Bay also carries local tradeoffs, from environmental concerns to the risk that a huge industrial bet could still fall short if the market for data centers or power exports does not materialize.

The idea is not emerging in a vacuum. In November 2024, Hilcorp and Texas-based TA Infrastructure were already testing a pilot data-center and Bitcoin-mining project at Hilcorp’s Endicott field, using existing gas-fired generators for a four-year continuous operation meant to show whether computer infrastructure can work in the North Slope environment. And just last year, Alaska Gasline Development Corp. was still promoting a $10.7 billion in-state gasline segment that could move as much as 500 million cubic feet a day, within a larger $44 billion project. That contrast shows how much is at stake: the North Slope’s gas may finally be moving from pipeline dream to power business, but the payoff will depend on whether the numbers work.