STAK Energy's North Slope AI campus lease
A preliminary decision would give STAK Energy a 50-year lease on 715.4 acres of state land about 26 miles south of Deadhorse for a gas-fired AI and cloud campus its developer pegs at more than $10 billion, with 1 to 3 gigawatts of on-site generation. More than 500 public comments arrived before the first deadline; fewer than a dozen supported the project.
How the public reaches this
The written comment window closed 4:30 p.m. July 17, 2026. DNR now weighs more than 500 comments before a final best-interest decision on the 50-year lease. No public comment path remains open.
Timeline
Sources
Every document a fact on this page was checked against.
How this decision moved
One dated line per material change, oldest first.
2026-07-08 Tracked. 500 plus comments on record, fewer than a dozen in favor; deadline already extended once.
2026-07-09 Re-verified via Northern Journal and ADN. More than 500 comments on record, fewer than a dozen in favor. DNR spokesperson Sean Clifton attributes the extension to comment volume, public interest and requests for extension. Stak's John Boyle calls most comments form letters lacking substance. Comment window stays open to July 17.
2026-07-10 Re-confirmed via Northern Journal. The comment window still closes July 17, still more than 500 comments with fewer than a dozen in support. No change to the schedule. One week out.
2026-07-11 Re-confirmed via Northern Journal (July 3 reporting) during this run's fact-check. Comment window still closes 4:30 p.m. July 17, still more than 500 comments with fewer than a dozen in support. Six days out.
2026-07-12 By early July more than 500 public comments had reached DNR on the North Slope lease, with fewer than a dozen in favor, and the comment deadline held at July 17. Opposition ranged across Kodiak, Kotzebue, Seward, Valdez and Nuiqsut and mixed subsistence, tundra gravel and climate objections with a widely repeated but factually shaky fear of higher power bills, since the North Slope is not tied to the Railbelt grid.
2026-07-14 Three days out. The written comment window on ADL 422741 still closes at 4:30 p.m. July 17 per DNR reporting, still more than 500 comments on record with fewer than a dozen in support. No schedule change surfaced this run. This is the one open-comment room among the tracked decisions.
2026-07-15 Two days out. Re-confirmed against Anchorage Daily News reporting from July 7 that more than 500 public comments oppose the Stak Energy North Slope data center lease and fewer than a dozen endorse it, with the written comment window still closing 4:30 p.m. July 17. No schedule change surfaced. This remains the one open comment room among the tracked decisions.
2026-07-17 Comment day. The written comment window on ADL 422741 closes at 4:30 p.m. today, the one open comment room among the tracked decisions. After it closes the lease moves to a pending final decision by DNR. More than 500 comments on record with fewer than a dozen in support, unchanged this run.
2026-07-18 The written comment window closed at 4:30 p.m. July 17, so the lease moves to a pending final decision by DNR Division of Oil and Gas. More than 500 comments on record with fewer than a dozen in support. Reporting notes the campus is off-grid and self-generating on North Slope gas hundreds of miles from urban Alaska, so its fuel use would not directly raise Railbelt household electricity prices. This run reframed the docket around that on-grid versus off-grid distinction.
2026-07-19 Re-verified the DNR primary notice this run. ADL 422741 remains a preliminary decision with no Final Finding and Decision issued yet. The written comment window closed 4:30 p.m. July 17, so the 50-year lease now sits with DNR Division of Oil and Gas for a final best-interest decision. More than 500 comments on record with fewer than a dozen in support, unchanged.
2026-07-20 Re-verified via Northern Journal. The extended written comment window closed July 17 with more than 500 comments on record and fewer than a dozen in support, and DNR will assess the comments before a final decision on the 50-year lease. No Final Finding and Decision is posted yet.
2026-07-21 Carried forward against Alaska Beacon and DataCenterDynamics reporting. The written comment window on ADL 422741 closed 4:30 p.m. July 17 with more than 500 comments on record and fewer than a dozen in favor, and the roughly one square mile campus (up to 3 GW, an estimated 350 to 500 million cubic feet of gas per day) now sits with the DNR Division of Oil and Gas for a Final Finding and Decision. No decision is posted yet this run.
2026-07-22 Re-verified the DNR primary notice ADL 422741. It remains a preliminary decision with no Final Finding and Decision posted. The written comment window closed 4:30 p.m. July 17, so the 50 year lease now sits with DNR Division of Oil and Gas for a final best interest decision. More than 500 comments on record with fewer than a dozen in support, unchanged this run.
2026-07-24 Selected as this run's carousel. Re-verified the DNR primary notice ADL 422741 with Northern Journal and ADN during this run's fact-check. It remains a preliminary decision with no Final Finding and Decision posted. The written comment window closed 4:30 p.m. July 17, so the 50-year lease now sits with DNR Division of Oil and Gas for a final best-interest decision. More than 500 comments on record with fewer than a dozen in support, unchanged this run. The deck frames the public revolt and the narrow path that remains once the comment room has closed.
2026-07-25 Carried forward unchanged. The written comment window closed at 4.30 p.m. on July 17, 2026 and the 50 year lease still sits with DNR's Division of Oil and Gas awaiting a final finding and decision. An attempt to re-fetch the state's own public notice page this run returned HTTP 503, so nothing here is updated on rumor. No final decision has surfaced.
2026-07-26 Re-verification attempted and failed. The DNR public notice path returned HTTP 404 to this run's fact checker and no alternate primary source was reachable, so the status stays pending decision on the strength of the prior run's reporting. No decision is asserted in either direction.
2026-07-29 Re-checked the state's own online public notice for ADL 422741. Twelve days after the written comment window closed at 4:30 p.m. on July 17, the Division of Oil and Gas has published no final best interest decision, and the notice still stands as a preliminary decision to offer the 50 year lease on 715.4 acres. Status unchanged at pending decision, and public access stays closed because no comment path remains open. Commenters who filed during the window may appeal the division's final decision if they are aggrieved by it.
Articles on this decision
Each of these verified a claim against a document this decision also rests on.
Cite this
Alaska AI Docket, STAK Energy's North Slope AI campus lease.
Tracked since July 8, 2026, last verified
July 29, 2026. https://alaskaaihq.com/docket/adl-422741-stak-north-slope-lease/ · Reuse permitted under
CC BY 4.0 with attribution. This decision is also available as
structured data in the docket
JSON, item id adl-422741-stak-north-slope-lease.