John Kurz left Alaska's oil fields in 2009 convinced the industry was finished. Crude output on the North Slope had cratered to 567,000 barrels per day—barely a quarter of the 2 million barrels daily the field produced two decades earlier. Waxy deposits threatened to clog the Trans Alaska Pipeline System itself.
"The industry was dying," Kurz, then a senior operations manager for BP, said at the time. "We could see the end of TAPS coming."
Kurz spent the next 14 years abroad. But he returned to Alaska in 2023 to run Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. the company that operates TAPS. His timing proved prescient. Geological surveys suggesting far larger oil reserves than previously known, combined with President Trump's pro-drilling policies, have ignited a rush of capital back to the Arctic.
Within hours of his inauguration, Trump signed orders to unlock Alaska's oil, gas and mineral wealth. The Interior Department has since lifted Biden-era drilling restrictions across significant portions of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and is streamlining permits for new projects.
The shift reverses decades of environmental opposition. The reserve spans 23 million acres in northwest Alaska and is home to migratory birds from every continent and other wildlife that environmental groups say would be threatened by accelerated drilling.
Bobby McEnaney, land conservation director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the administration's approach amounts to "a gold rush mentality" rather than the "measured approach" required for "America's largest intact ecosystem."
But energy executives across the Arctic and in Houston expect the regulatory changes to outlast Trump's term. New test wells, geological data showing expanded reserves, and global energy disruptions have rekindled interest in Alaska's liquefied natural gas export project. The convergence of policy shifts, new discoveries and rising global demand is driving the current surge into the Arctic.
