
Nick Begich
112:25 - 113:13
"That calculus is amplified in Alaska, where every acre of subsurface and surface disturbance triggers extensive federal review, and remote logistics make each borehole extraordinarily expensive. What magnitude of drilling and surface disturbance reduction have you seen or modeled, and how transformational could that be for Alaska projects where a smaller exploration footprint directly reduces both permitting risk and cost?"
“That calculus is amplified in Alaska, where every acre of subsurface and surface disturbance triggers extensive federal review, and remote logistics make each borehole extraordinarily expensive. What magnitude of drilling and surface disturbance reduction have you seen or modeled, and how transformational could that be for Alaska projects where a smaller exploration footprint directly reduces both permitting risk and cost?”
That calculus is amplified in Alaska, where every acre of subsurface and surface disturbance triggers extensive federal review, and remote logistics make each borehole extraordinarily expensive. What magnitude of drilling and surface disturbance reduction have you seen or modeled, and how transformational could that be for Alaska projects where a smaller exploration footprint directly reduces reduces both permitting risk and cost? Thank you for the question, Representative. The purpose of this bill would be to compare the quantum technologies versus the classical technologies side by side and see what benefits that we are getting from the quantum versions. What I can say from experience though is that usually we see orders of magnitude improvement when doing things with quantum technologies.
The federal geological mapping program that nearly doubled Alaska's publicly available subsurface data expires at year end. Two House bills heard Tuesday would reauthorize it through 2031 and layer quantum gravity sensing onto the effort, with Alaska's unmapped interior at the center of the case for both.

The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources heard testimony Tuesday on a bipartisan bill that would cut the FAST-41 permitting threshold from $200 million to $50 million, potentially opening the program to broadband, water, and small energy projects that rural and tribal communities depend on, but a former council director warned the bill cannot compel agencies to act in good faith.
