Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has reflated the idea of a 2,600-kilometre rail line from Fort McMurray to Anchorage, AK with her Alaskan counterpart, Governor Mike Dunleavy.Speaking at an energy conference in the state capital on the weekend, Smith and Dunleavy pitched the idea of reviving the line — known as ‘A2A’ — between Delta Junction and Fort Mac, via Fort Nelson, British Columbia. In 2020 then-president Donald Trump issued a permit granting approval for the rail project but it never got past the planning stages.In 2021, the company behind the project, the company behind the proposal went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy after racking up USD$212.9 million in debt. At the time of the filing, its only assets were consulting reports and intellectual property..In 2021, the Ontario Securities Commission began investigating irregularities in the business dealings between the main financier of the A2A project, Bridging Finance Inc., and A2A's president, Sean McCoshen. The OSC alleged that following the funding of loans to various McCoshen companies, McCoshen funnelled a total of $19.5 million to Bridging's CEO David Sharpe.Additionally, the OSC also alleged that "millions of dollars pledged for A2A rail also went to McCoshen's personal bank account and to an apparently unrelated company controlled by him."As of 2020, the project was estimated to cost $20 billion. Under the proposal, Alberta oil would have been shipped by rail to the Trans-Alaska pipeline terminal for export through Valdez on the coast.The idea has been floated in various incarnations since at least 1898. This time, however, the link was seen as an alternative to the cancelled Northern Gateway pipeline project to Kitimat, British Columbia. .Meanwhile, Smith posted on Twitter (“X”) on Tuesday that she was returning to Alberta from the conference after what she characterized as positive meetings with state officials.According to local media outlets, the premier riffed on several themes she has repeatedly broached in speeches to domestic audiences; namely carbon capture, geothermal energy, hydrogen and plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050.“We’re transitioning away from emissions. We’re not transitioning away from production,” Smith told the meeting.“I think that because we’re both northern jurisdictions, we have a huge advantage if we can figure out how to create reliable emissions, free power, so that we can be able to attract that kind of investment. And so in our province, we’re looking at carbon capture, utilization, and storage. We’re looking at adding small modular reactors. We have some geothermal capacity, not quite the same, I don’t think, to the extent that Alaska has. We’re also looking at how hydrogen can be brought into this new economy as well,” Smith added.
