ASRC Energy Services gets $13.9 million toward North Slope carbon storage hub planning

A proposed carbon dioxide storage hub on the North Slope now has $13.9 million in federal money to reach the point where backers decide whether to build it. The award covers the work that comes before that decision, not construction. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded the cooperative agreement, a grant with ongoing federal involvement, to ASRC Energy Services, the Anchorage-based energy subsidiary of Arctic Slope Regional Corporation.

The project, titled the North to the Future Carbon Capture and Sequestration Hub, runs from Thursday, Oct. 1, through March 31, 2028. Its stated objective is to perform tasks that will "advance towards the development of a commercial-scale CO2 storage hub" and "meet all requirements necessary to reach a financial investment decision for construction." A financial investment decision is the point at which backers commit capital to build. The record does not state that construction has been approved or funded.

The department's project summary says ASRC Energy Services plans to drill one test well, study how to move carbon dioxide and whether area emitters could supply it, write a storage field development plan, complete federal environmental review and begin applying for a federal injection-well permit. It describes an initial design of two injection wells and transport pipelines serving two localized regions of CO2 emitters.

The company holds a separate $2.83 million federal award, through December 2026, to study how existing direct-air-capture technologies would work in Alaska.

The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission plans to seek primacy, or federal authority, to permit Class VI wells, a federal designation for wells used to inject carbon dioxide for long-term underground storage. Six environmental and public-interest groups, the Alaska Center, the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Alaska Public Interest Research Group, the Center for Biological Diversity, Cook Inletkeeper and the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, submitted an 11-page joint filing on the state's Class VI primacy application. Commissioner Tom McKay said at a May 21, 2026, briefing that staff were responding to the five or six points the groups raised.

"So once we complete that work, we'll submit our primacy application and hopefully get approved so that the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission can permit and manage Class VI CO2 storage wells in Alaska," McKay said.