VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2025 www.AKRDC.org 11 — is richer. Alaska holds an estimated 40 billion barrels of oil reserves, and roughly 235 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. In just one oil field alone — Prudhoe Bay — Alaska reinjects as much natural gas every day as Oregon, Washington and California consume. Resource development is the heart and soul of the Alaskan economy. We continue to make progress — despite opposition from senior Biden officials — on commercializing these massive natural gas reserves with a large-scale LNG project that would get clean-burning Alaska natural gas to Americans, our Alaska-based military, future data centers that love Alaska’s cold, and our allies in Asia who desperately need to diversify their supplies of natural gas away from countries like Russia and Qatar. This much-needed American LNG project would put America first by creating thousands of good-paying jobs, reducing our trade deficit by an estimated $10 billion dollars annually, and being an effective counter to China’s Belt and Road debt trap for countries in Asia. Alaska also has a wealth of minerals and metals, with one of the largest known graphite deposits in the world. It has the tenth largest deposit of gold in the world. We have one of the largest zinc mines in the world. We also have a trove of critical and rare earth minerals essential for our national defense, economy and renewable energy sector. The United States is almost wholly dependent on China for many of these minerals. But President Biden, cowing to radical environmental groups, has worked overtime to make sure that America’s minerals and metals in Alaska stay in the ground. For instance, the Trump Administration approved a road that is needed to access critical minerals and metals from one of our country’s richest deposits — the Ambler Mining District in Alaska’s Interior. But the Biden Administration killed that road last June, even though federal law mandates it. Of course, that didn’t stop Joe Biden from recently traveling to Angola to announce $600 million in aid to build a railroad in Angola to help that country produce and market its critical minerals. This is insane. During the first Trump administration, we made advances on all these fronts for Alaska and celebrated them for what they were: enormous advantages for our nation. Fortunately, President-elect Trump has said repeatedly that Alaska, with its vast resources and its strategic location, will again be a key focus in the next Trump Administration. And the hard-working Alaskans who help us realize our resource potential will be thanked, not demonized as they have been under the Biden Administration. Buy Greenland? If the price is right and the Danes are willing to sell, sure. But it is important to keep in mind what the father of the U.S. Air Force General Billy Mitchell prophetically said in 1935: “I believe that in the future, whoever controls Alaska controls the world. I think it is the most strategic place in the world.” Alaska's rich deposits of critical and rare earth minerals remain essential to the state and federal economies, and must continue to be extracted.
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