500 to Fewer Than 12. One Office Holds the Pen.
More than 500 comments landed on a North Slope AI data center, and fewer than a dozen backed it.
The deck
SWIPE, SCROLL OR CLICK A SLIDE TO GO FULLSCREEN · 9 SLIDES
The story
The state's preliminary nod would hand Stak Energy 715.4 acres 26 miles south of Deadhorse on a 50-year lease, a gas-fired campus that could pull about 1 gigawatt, roughly 30% more than urban Alaska's whole peak grid.
The loudest objection, higher home power bills, is the weakest, because the campus makes its own power on site, off the Railbelt grid that feeds Anchorage and Fairbanks. What actually holds is quieter, 50 years of public land, about 7.1 million cubic yards of gravel on tundra, and 350 to 500 million cubic feet of gas a day. The deck grades them, loudest to strongest.
The comments ran better than 40 to 1 against, and one state agency still holds the signature. So what is that public land honestly worth to lease away for half a century?
Slide by slide
EVERY FIGURE LINKS TO THE DOCUMENT IT WAS VERIFIED AGAINST
Form letters lacking substance.
500 said no. One office decides.
A square mile of gravel. 26 miles from Deadhorse.
Bigger than the whole grid.
Not every objection is equal.
Your bill is the weak argument.
The real fight is land, gravel, gas.
Form letters lacking substance.
When 500 say no and fewer than a dozen say yes, should one office hold the pen?
What we verified
13 CLAIMS, EACH RE-FETCHED FROM ITS SOURCE BEFORE THIS DECK SHIPPED
Alaska DNR's Division of Oil and Gas issued a preliminary decision dated May 12, 2026 regarding the Stak Energy lease (ADL 422741).
The decision would grant STAK Energy Corporation a 50-year lease of 715.4 acres of state land.
The site is located adjacent to the Dalton Highway approximately 26 miles south of Deadhorse.
The site is near Dalton Highway Milepost 390.
The proposed use is a commercial natural-gas-powered energy facility including modular high-performance computing (AI data center) units.
The project proposes 1 to 3 gigawatts of on-site natural-gas-fired generation.
The facility would consume 350 to 500 million standard cubic feet of gas per day, roughly 128 to 183 billion cubic feet per year.
Reported cost is about $500 million for initial site development and more than $10 billion for the total project.
Site work includes a principal gravel pad of approximately 640 acres, a 1.8-mile gravel access road, and roughly 7.1 million cubic yards of gravel fill.
The public comment window originally closed at 4:30 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time on June 15, 2026, and was extended to July 17, 2026 due to comment volume.
More than 500 public comments were received, with fewer than a dozen in support of the project.
Stak Chief Strategy Officer John Boyle, a former Alaska DNR commissioner, said the vast majority of comments are form letters lacking substance.
The generators could produce a gigawatt or more, roughly 30% more than the peak demand of urban Alaska's entire grid.
Sources
Sources, primary first Alaska DNR Online Public Notices, ADL 422741 preliminary decision dated May 12 2026, https://aws.state.ak.us/OnlinePublicNotices/Notices/View.aspx?id=223817 Northern Journal, data center critics flood Alaska land managers with opposition to North Slope project, Jul 3 2026, https://www.northernjournal.com/data-center-critics-flood-alaska-land-managers-with-opposition-to-north-slope-project/ Anchorage Daily News, data center critics flood Alaska land managers with opposition to North Slope project, Jul 7 2026, https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2026/07/07/data-center-critics-flood-alaska-land-managers-with-opposition-to-north-slope-project/ Alaska Beacon, data center critics flood Alaska land managers with opposition to North Slope project, Jul 6 2026, https://alaskabeacon.com/2026/07/06/data-center-critics-flood-alaska-land-managers-with-opposition-to-north-slope-project/ Northern Alaska Environmental Center, what the state's lease documents reveal about scale, risk, and unanswered questions, May 28 2026, https://northern.org/news/stak-energy-campus-what-the-states-lease-documents-reveal-about-scale-risk-and-unanswered-questions/