Utility warns of rolling blackouts in Southcentral as soon as this winter

For the first time in a 45-year career, the head of Matanuska Electric Association says he cannot guarantee reliable power to his members — and rolling blackouts could begin as soon as November if there isn't enough Cook Inlet gas to get the region through a cold snap.

MEA CEO Tony Izzo laid out the warning last week at a press conference held by the Municipality of Anchorage, standing alongside Mayor Suzanne LaFrance, Mat-Su Borough Mayor Edna DeVries and Enstar Natural Gas President John Sims. The utility is now writing rolling outages into its official rules — 30-minute cycles, with hospitals and other critical facilities exempt. Izzo called the prospect "unprecedented," and pointed north to Fairbanks, where Golden Valley Electric is now moving hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel a day, as "the canary in the coal mine."

The problem underneath it is a gas supply that's thinning faster than the region can replace it. MEA can switch to diesel to keep the lights on, Izzo said, but it's expensive — and in a real pinch, the utility may divert its own gas to Enstar to keep pressure in the lines that heat people's homes, since a cold house is more dangerous than a dark one. That tradeoff is part of why the electricity, not the heat, is what may get cut.

Sims put hard numbers to how tight things are getting. Enstar pays about $10.80 per thousand cubic feet of gas today; imported LNG runs closer to $22 — a gap he expects to drive prices up 30 to 50 percent in the first years of importing, and possibly double by 2030. He traced the squeeze to how little drilling is happening: Hilcorp is drilling 27 wells this year just to meet its existing contracts, the next-biggest producer is drilling two, and another supplier is delivering less than half the gas Enstar counted on. Electric utilities' contracts with Hilcorp start expiring in 2028, and Enstar doesn't expect imported gas online before 2029. Asked what state lawmakers could do this winter, Sims was blunt: "I'm not sure there's anything the legislature can do this year."

The local leaders said the fixes a city or borough can manage — waste-to-energy, rooftop solar, weatherization — don't come close to closing the gap. "We can't stand by and let Alaskans foot the bill for an energy crisis that we all saw coming," LaFrance said.