Coal’s revival is creating divisions in Canada’s energy heartland

Bloomberg News | October 11, 2026 | 

Grassy Mountain is on the site of an old mine that closed about 50 years ago. (Image courtesy of Northback Holdings.)

At the top of Grassy Mountain, some 6,700 feet above sea level, seams of coal are baked into the mountainside, visible through mining in this stretch of the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Alberta from the early to mid-1900s. This and other former mines dot the picturesque mountain towns on the eastern side of the continental divide, the industry having moved out of the region decades ago after plummeting prices and demand made mining here unprofitable. 

But Grassy still has more coal to give — much more. It’s now the center of a yearslong battle pitting nearby towns’ economic interests against environmental worries from downstream communities and ranchers. And this time, it’s being driven not by demand to heat homes in Canada, but to feed steelmakers in China, Japan, South Korea, India and other Asian countries.

Nearly 60 years after this site closed, locals are once again pinning their hopes for an economic revival on this windswept mountainside. Northback Holdings Corp., a division of Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting Pty., is working to reopen the former mine.

This is Hancock’s second attempt after an earlier application was rejected by a joint federal and provincial review panel in 2021 over concerns about the impact on the nearby water ecosystem. Northback Chief Executive Officer Brad Johnston believes the company can address the deficiencies in its first application and go further in restoring the mountain, including much of the unreclaimed former mine site.

Gina Rinehart closer to opening contested coal mine in Canada

Hancock has spent more than a decade and over C$150 million ($105 million) on a project that faces stiff opposition and is still at least four years from opening. It’s promising to scale back its original plans by around 40% to produce 2.5 million metric tons a year instead of 4 million, boost reclamation efforts during the course of mining, build a water treatment plant and stick around for years after production ceases.

The company is persistent because its forecasts show an undersupply in the global market within the next decade and pricing levels far beyond what it costs to extract the coal.

The proposal and others like it have struck a nerve in Alberta, a region traditionally friendly toward resource development, both in terms of public support and government policy. Country music star Corb Lund led a petition campaign this year to stop coal mining in the eastern slopes of the Rockies, attempting to force a provincial vote on the issue this month, unsuccessfully. A recent survey found a majority of the public would have supported his position in a referendum.

The fight over the project also reveals a little-known fact about Canadian coal. Within the country, it has been on a long decline, as governments moved to reduce coal used for power production. But at the country’s western ports, coal is still king of commodity volumes. About 39.9 million metric tons were exported from Vancouver last year, compared to 30 million tons of petroleum products.

While the province of British Columbia now accounts for the majority of coal production, Alberta has seen a number of proposals in recent years and the province recently approved an expansion of the Vista Coal Mine in Hinton, near Jasper National Park, that will make it the largest thermal coal mine in North America.

About 70% of the world’s steel supply depends on metallurgical coal and Canada is the fifth-largest global supplier, accounting for roughly C$9 billion in exports.

Northback isn’t the only such new proposal in the Rockies. Northwest of Calgary, Valory Resources Inc. is pitching Blackstone, an underground metallurgical mine in Clearwater County, and another one called Mine 14 near the town of Grande Cache.

In BC, Conuma Resources Ltd. reopened a mine near Tumbler Ridge in 2024 and a sister project was included in the province’s recent deal book marketed to global investors. Glencore Plc is also seeking to expand its Fording River site to maintain the mine’s 10 million metric tons of annual production.

Johnston, who took over as Northback’s CEO in July, says any coal mined at Grassy Mountain will all be for export off the west coast of Canada, largely out of the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert. The company’s projections, he says, show it can be profitable over the course of its projected 25-year lifespan due to strong Asian demand for steel-making coal, listing Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia and India as possible customers.

The type of coal here is also high-quality enough for European steel producers. “The world wants this coal, it needs it,” he says.

The proposal would be a major employer for the five historic mining communities near Grassy Mountain. He cites the roughly 400 full-time jobs needed to operate it and the C$2.2 billion ($1.5 billion) in government revenue the mine will generate over its lifetime, according to a report prepared for the company by EY.

The company has already been sponsoring local organizations and has hired locals for its preparatory work, including a First Nations security contractor. Johnston says he is aiming to file another application in the coming months, with a potential target of opening in late 2030 if it receives regulatory approval.

He acknowledges the company’s first application did not sufficiently deal with concerns over its environmental impact. A joint federal-provincial review panel found the project was “not in the public interest” and would harm the nearby population of westslope cutthroat trout. He believes their new proposal is improved enough to meet regulatory hurdles, but knows there’s widespread opposition to coal.

“There are some people that are opposed to what we do, no matter how well we do it, or whatever systems of controls we propose to put into place,” he says. The company is always willing to answer questions about environmental management, he says, and local support “doesn’t come unconditionally, and their expectation is that we’re going to provide jobs and economic benefit, but we’re going to do so in an environmentally responsible way. 

There’s been more public backing in Canada for energy projects since US President Donald Trump’s administration began pressuring the country on trade, says Heather Exner-Pirot, director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. That attention has largely been around oil and gas, and hasn’t necessarily translated to coal.

“I think most people, even in Canada, don’t appreciate that metallurgical coal is our biggest export by volume out of the Port of Vancouver and the Port of Prince Rupert, and that by revenue, after gold, it’s usually our top-producing mineral product,” she says.

She points out the towns closest to the proposed mine are largely in favor and people further away are opposed. In Crowsnest Pass, the municipality nearest Grassy Mountain, more than 70% voted to support the mine in a 2024 plebiscite. But municipal councils downstream, including in Lethbridge, Alberta’s fourth-largest city, have been staunchly opposed.

While Prime Minister Mark Carney’s federal government has been encouraging “nation building” projects to spur economic activity and build stronger interprovincial connections, the coal in western Canada won’t be going to the steel factories of southern Ontario and Quebec. The cost to ship by rail across the country makes it too expensive for the steel factories to use.

Instead, demand is driven by Asian countries and interest in Canada as a conscientious steward in producing coal. “If you are a Japan or a Korea, you may be willing actually to pay a premium for that better environmentally and socially responsible product,” Exner-Pirot says.

Source: Bloomberg News.

Steel is “ubiquitous” in products ranging from batteries to large-scale energy infrastructure, said Ian Lange, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines. Demand for steel and therefore metallurgical coal can be a proxy for economic activity around the world. Alberta is one of the most attractive places for natural resource extraction given its friendly regulatory environment and ease of getting to Pacific ports, he says, and miners have been making greater efforts to ensure environmental protection.

But he says “it’s really hard to say with certainty that this won’t be a problem 30, 40 years down the line.” 

The environmental pushback to increased mining in the Rockies can point to substantial levies against operators in recent years. Coal mines in BC faced C$60 million in federal fines in 2021 for water contamination breaches, and another C$16 million in fines from the province in 2023. And as recently as this past July, Glencore-owned Elk Valley Operations Ltd. was fined an additional C$269,000  as part of a larger C$3.6 million ruling over delaying construction of water treatment facilities and 171 water quality breaches related to selenium.

Concerns over water quality extend south of the border. A 2024 study from the US Geological Survey found evidence of selenium pollution as far as 350 miles away from Elk Valley’s mine along the Columbia River and contamination in other cross-border waterways.

Lund is a fourth-generation Albertan, his family settling in the early 1900s on ranch land they still own near the Montana border. He spearheaded a petition to have a referendum on banning some new coal mining that garnered more than 170,000 signatures earlier this year, though the question did not get put on the ballot for voting day on Oct. 19. 

He says he was drawn into the issue after rancher friends of his worried about the potential impacts on downstream water from selenium and other contamination. The amount of water used and the air quality are other concerns.

“As far as I can tell, it’s a bad deal and it’s going to ruin our water and our ranch land, and there’s nothing in it for Albertans,” he said. “And I think it’s a foreign billionaire coming here to take our coal and make all the money and leave us with the mess.”

His family’s land isn’t threatened by the mine reopening, but his residence in Lethbridge is served by the watershed from around Grassy Mountain. He says he’s seen the issue resonate across political lines in the largely conservative, pro-resource development province. Many Albertans view the Rocky Mountains as “the soul of the province, and that includes a good chunk of the conservative base who are hunters and fishermen and ranchers and irrigating farmers,” Lund says. “So it’s not just a left-right issue. It’s very close to a lot of people’s hearts here.”  

He’s “been in this fight for almost seven years now, and we’ve outlasted two premiers” as well as “multiple CEOs from the coal companies” and they will do everything they can to stop new mining in the nearby Rockies.

Lucas Michalsky, a cattle rancher about 20 minutes east of Grassy Mountain, has a different take on the mine’s impact. “We are the forgotten corner of Alberta,” says Michalsky, whose family worked in nearby coal mines after moving from Poland in the early 1900s.

The Grassy Mountain proposal has already brought more hope to local residents about the prospect of higher-quality jobs. “Northback has put in tens of millions of dollars,” into the area, he says. “All the people that are against coal haven’t put a dime into our community.”

Some local residents work in Glencore’s coal mines across the BC border, or see their children move to work in northern Alberta’s oil sands. The draw for Michalsky is seeing his kids close to home where they might “have a job as a millwright or a welder or an electrician at Northback, and come home every night so they can run cattle.”

He believes the environmental impact is overstated by opponents, who are largely not from the immediate towns that will benefit from the mine. “This is a blue-collar community. It always has been. And we’ve lost our logging. We’ve lost our oil and gas. Mining is the only thing we have left, because we never really had much of the first two.”

(By Iain Boekhoff, Michael McKee and Arielle Schwartz)

The War in Ukraine Is Spiraling Out of Control

Branko Marcetic
Sat, October 10, 2026 


Hawks deemed Russia a paper tiger for not responding to Europe's deepening involvement in the Ukraine war. Reported Russian drone attacks show they're underestimating the risk of an escalating tit for tat. (Yevhen Titov / Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)More


War is in the air in Europe. Over the four years and counting that it's raged, the Ukraine war has often been compared to the two world wars, being the largest land war the continent's seen since the second of those and having surpassed the length of the first this past June. But unlike those disastrous conflicts, the fighting in Ukraine has not become a true continent-wide affair that's dragged the rest of Europe's powers into the fray — so far.

It is becoming alarmingly uncertain how much longer that will hold. For nearly five years, both Russia and European North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states have been at pains to avoid being pulled into direct war with each other. But as Ukraine's war effort falters, there are mounting signs of the conflict spiraling into generalized warfare. Between escalations, accidents, and a thick haze of sometimes purposeful misinformation, the risk that the conflict may spin out from yet another European bloodbath to something even more cataclysmic has perhaps never been higher.

It's a bitter vindication for antiwar voices who warned for years that NATO member states were sleepwalking into a wider, more dangerous confrontation with Russia. The question now is what can be done to forestall their darkest predictions.
Threats and Accidents

The stakes of a direct Russian-European war are high. Experts have long argued that any such conflict would quickly turn nuclear, precisely because, as a 2022 Brown University paper argued, Russia's conventional military weakness versus NATO makes it more likely to reach for the nuclear option.

"I think the mainstream media has downplayed these risks, because it would severely undermine support for Ukraine," says Lyle Goldstein, senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and the author of that report.

With Russia and NATO's non-American member states holding nearly five thousand active nuclear warheads between them, any nuclear exchange between the two would not just likely kill millions but imperil the very future of humanity. This is why world leaders for decades painstakingly restrained any conflict between the alliance and the then–Soviet Union, right down to their public rhetoric.

And yet hardly a month goes by these days without European and Russian officials openly threatening one another.

This past April, Vladimir Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia who now serves as the deputy chair of its security council, publicly declared a list of European drone-making facilities a "register of potential legitimate targets"; a month later he warned EU citizens that their "peaceful sleep is over" and that their leaders had "unilaterally entered into a war with Russia." Meanwhile, the head of Germany's air force has vowed to swiftly bomb Russia in the event of war, while Poland's foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has boasted that Europe could destroy Russian fuel refineries in "six days" and defeat it in a war "quite quickly."

These verbal salvos hit an alarming peak last week, after Moscow — which two years ago officially lowered its threshold for the use nuclear weapons — formally warned NATO that it was prepared to use nukes against the alliance, which it charged with taking steps that risked "the outbreak of direct armed conflict." It came in the wake of statements and leaked plans identifying Kaliningrad — the Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland that serves as a key Russian military outpost — as a top early target in the event of a war between Russia and NATO.

All the while, a monthslong drumbeat of warnings has sounded from NATO state officials and intelligence agencies that war with Russia may be right around the corner, or is already underway. The Baltic states have put in place mass evacuation plans, German hospitals are bracing for future mass casualties, and the British government wants citizens to start stockpiling food and water. European capitals are hearing talk of military conscription to meet what seems like an almost inevitable conflict.

This war of words is a function of what increasingly resembles a literal war.

European officials accuse Russia of a spree of sabotage incidents at defense industrial facilities and other sites across Europe, just as Medvedev warned in April — most infamously, a set of explosive-laden drones discovered at and around Leipzig airport, a logistics hub for NATO's supplies to Ukraine. One German commentator described the incident as the country's version of 9/11 — a questionable comparison, since no one died at Leipzig, but an ominous one given the US foreign policy choices that followed those attacks.

This adds to a growing list of accidental incursions. During Russia's now monthslong air assault on Ukraine, Russian munitions, drones, and other aircraft have crossed into the airspace or onto the soil of NATO states dozens of times, including just last week. Russian drones have reportedly violated NATO member Romania's airspace twenty-three times this year: more than all such incidents over the previous three years combined.

So far none have reached the danger of November 2022, when an errant pair of rockets wrongly blamed on Russia killed two farmers on the Polish side of the border, triggering calls for war and an urgent NATO meeting to discuss a response — an emergency only defused when it turned out that Ukraine had been accidentally responsible.

"If any one of the incidents that we've seen in the past four months had happened in 2023, it would have been game-changing, everyone would've been freaking out about it," says Emma Ashford, senior fellow with the Stimson Center's Reimagining US Grand Strategy program. "We've become so inured to this conflict going on, there was not a huge reaction to any of these."

But it may be a matter of time: in another instance last month, a Russian warship fired two emergency flares at a Danish helicopter conducting surveillance, narrowly missing it.

"As these hybrid incidents get more frequent, their kinetic nature intensifies," says Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities. "Without a dialogue channel, there's always a risk that Russia inadvertently steps over a line and triggers escalation."

Tit for Tat for Tit for Tat

That risk became viscerally real last month, after a Russian drone destroyed part of a train near the Ukrainian-Polish border mere minutes after a group of US and European officials were shuttled away. Seemingly calibrated to be a near miss, the attack could have easily triggered what one ex-CIA official described as an "escalatory chain" leading to war had it been slightly off.

"The Russian motivation here is to impose costs on Europe, to retaliate for the costs that Ukraine is imposing on Russia," says Kavanagh. "The Russians understand European money is funding Ukraine's war effort and that Europe is giving it drones."

Those drones have, by Putin's own admission, been used to inflict damage on Russia worth 1 percent of its GDP, or, according to Kyiv, to knock out half of its oil refining capacity. NATO states have not just furnished the arms to do this but, through the US and French governments, provided the intelligence that Ukraine has used to select targets and help its drones evade Russian air defenses.

As heartening as this might be for Ukraine's war effort, it has come with real risk, as the line blurs between simply providing military support, which NATO states view themselves as doing, and becoming full-on cobelligerents. To get a sense of how potentially inflammatory such support might be in Moscow, consider the outrage sparked in Washington and Brussels when it was revealed earlier this year that Russia was providing Iran with a similar kind of support to what NATO states are now giving Ukraine.

Consider, too, that this support blows well past the lines that Western officials themselves drew earlier in the war to limit the risk of escalation. Long gone are the days when US and European officials thought that merely helping Ukraine obtain fighter jets was too risky, let alone approving long-range strikes into Russian territory. Instead, convinced that the lack of Russian retaliation for these moves over the years meant that "Putin's red lines are just a bluff intended to scare the West," as the hawkish Atlantic Council put it, Western leaders appear to be throwing caution to the wind.

"It's notable how far escalation has progressed without a real Russian response," says Kavanagh.

"There is definitely a school of thought in the Western securicratic community that suggests that Russia's a paper tiger, so we can cross as many red lines as we want," says Leonid Ragozin, a Russian journalist and Putin critic in exile. "They believe Russia can be provoked endlessly and at some point it will reach a breaking point. But if you hear the signals from Moscow, I think they are quite unequivocal, they are going to retaliate."

In other words, Moscow's sabotage campaign currently threatening to draw Europe directly into the conflict may well be a Russian attempt to belatedly restore deterrence.

"That is absolutely the viewpoint in Moscow, that they needed to demonstrate that Europe could not continue to do the things it was doing with impunity," says Ashford.

That Moscow is now making good on the warnings it issued for years should be sobering, given how frequently and consistently it has similarly warned about its willingness to reach for the nuclear option — and how often those, too, have been dismissed in the West. The Financial Times' Gideon Rachman recently observed that Putin's failure to follow through on past nuclear threats perversely means they "no longer work" as a deterrent.

Yet both former CIA Director Bill Burns and former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl say Russian leaders were dead serious about reaching for a nuke in fall 2022, when then-President Joe Biden told a group of donors the world was hurtling toward possible "Armageddon." Since then, Russian military strategists have continued to talk about the need to keep nuclear use on the table against a complacent West and have carried out tests and military exercises to that end.

"For many years I've been concerned that Russian admirals are making the argument to the Kremlin, 'The West has really lost its mind, we need to take out a French frigate to teach them a lesson about what happens when you mess with the Russians,'" says Goldstein. "I really feel that we're close to that moment."
Fog in a Spiral

This would all be fraught enough in a perfect information environment. But a combination of the fog of war and deliberate misinformation has made it especially hard to sort what's true from what isn't.

"We know both sides distort the truth pretty systematically," says Goldstein.

The intelligence agencies and leaders of Finland, Denmark, Estonia, and Lithuania as well as the NATO secretary general and the EU defense commissioner, have all come out in the past week to say there is no imminent threat from Russia nor intelligence suggesting one. Yet, for months, many of these same voices were saying the exact opposite, sowing public fear.

"When I talk to sources particularly in Ukraine, they connect the hype to the adoption of the long-term budget of the EU for the period 2028–2034," says Ragozin. "They believe it boils down to a battle for funding for the next six years."

"Some of the language coming out of Germany and the UK seems to me mostly driven by generating the political appetite for defense funding," says Kavanagh.

Sure enough, some European governments appear to be using the specter of war with Russia to lay the groundwork for a pump-priming policy of military Keynesianism, including in Britain, whose new chancellor has promised a "new age of industrialization" centered on rebuilding naval infrastructure. In Poland, meanwhile, a top official in the president's office accused Sikorski and Donald Tusk, who is prime minister, of exploiting fears of Russia for their own political purposes.

Experts are skeptical about the appetite of either side to actually make good on their most hawkish rhetoric.

"I think they know in the backs of their minds how devastating this would be," says Goldstein.

Some European officials have effectively acknowledged outright they're not yet ready to take on Russia. Meanwhile, for a Russia that believes it's winning what has become a grinding attritional war, getting Europe involved could be a complication it can't afford.

Still, as countless military crises have shown, intentions don't always matter. One reason is the way that adversaries tend to misread both each other's actions and the way their own actions appear to the other side.

If Moscow's sabotage campaign was intended to send a message of deterrence to NATO, European and US officials are instead reading it as a deliberate "test" of, or attempt to weaken, the alliance's solidarity — one that calls for their own efforts to restore deterrence against Russia, since in their view, this behavior confirms that "strength" is the "one language" that Putin understands. To that end, the EU is now exploring a NATO-like way to respond with their own form of "hybrid warfare" that, like Russia's, theoretically falls short of a full-scale attack but proves "painful in a similar way."

"The Russians think they're signaling that Europe is getting too comfortable with the idea that they can aid Ukraine, and Europe is seeing it as a Russian attempt to escalate conflict with them," says Ashford.

"Europe wants to believe they're not combatants, that what they're doing is normal and non-threatening," says Kavanagh. "Of course, the Russians don't see it that way and want to make that clear. Europe sees all the escalation from the Russian side and don't seem to recognize the ways in which their own behavior is contributing to the escalation spiral."

The other reason is the extent to which European leadership has staked their own prestige on an increasingly unlikely outcome: Ukrainian military victory.
The Best Outcome for All

The level of physical destruction inflicted on Russia notwithstanding, Ukraine's drone campaign this past summer proved to be just the latest costly military gambit that failed to achieve its goals: when the dust had settled, they had not succeeded in pressuring Putin to end the war or in engineering political unrest within Russia. And while Ukraine has regained some territory since, the overall state of the battlefield hasn't fundamentally changed in its favor.

"There has been tangible success, but at the tactical not strategic level," says Ragozin. "Ukraine is showing resilience on the battlefield, but there is no breakthrough. The picture isn't rosy for the Russians, but it's pretty dark for the Ukrainians."

The Ukrainian government is now mired in a mushrooming political crisis of its own, suffering from serious (and sometimes literal) political infighting and looking at a massive budget shortfall — all as it weathers the most brutal Russian bombing campaign yet with little ability to defend itself, the US war with Iran having drained global supplies of missile interceptors. After years of European leaders insisting not only that Ukraine would win the war, but that it must, predicting a dark future for all of Europe if it didn't, Ukrainian officials are now starting to openly say that their country is losing.

"The leadership in Europe is so invested in this narrative of Ukrainian victory, to even slightly walk back from that and say, 'Well, everything we've said for the last five years is over the top' — they're not going to do that," says Goldstein.

The alternatives are to escalate further — with all the risks that come with it — in the hopes of some future breakthrough or an option that European officials have tended to frame as being just as unacceptable as defeat: making painful concessions in peace talks.

"It's been clear for years what Russia wants, what its conditions are," says Ragozin. Those conditions include Ukraine formally relinquishing its aspirations to joining NATO and, most contentiously, giving up Crimea, the Donbas, and other territories that Russian forces have illegally occupied since 2022. While Zelensky has publicly acknowledged that Ukraine lacks the means to militarily retake the Donbas and, especially Crimea, the idea of formally relinquishing these territories in negotiations remains a nonstarter in Kyiv.

"The problem with Russia is it's absolutely entrenched in those positions and not moving an inch," says Ragozin. "Russia is ready to negotiate, but it's not ready to compromise."

Yet the longer the war goes on in the hope of avoiding this unjust outcome, the bleaker Ukraine's future looks.

According to Poland's Tusk, Ukraine is suffering a staggering casualty rate of 27,000 killed or wounded per month, prompting talk of drafting women and leading to aggressive and unpopular recruitment tactics that have met with increasingly violent resistance from Ukrainians. Together with a mass exodus to avoid both the war and the prospect of fighting in it, the country's population has dramatically shrunk, and its birth rate now lags way behind its mortality rate, foreshadowing future demographic, pension, and labor crises. Under air strikes that it can no longer repel, the country's iron and steel industry — about 5.5 percent of its GDP last year — has effectively shut down.

In other words, seeking a negotiated end to the war, however, unfair the terms, could not just help shut off the current escalatory spiral and avoid a Europe-wide catastrophe but may also in the long run benefit Ukraine.

"We should recognize any peace is going to be bad. No one is going to like it. It's still better than continuing the war," says Kavanagh.

This article originally appeared in Jacobin, a democratic socialist magazine publishing long-form essays and analysis on politics, economics, and culture. Subscribe to the print edition for $20 a year.

BUY CANADIAN!

 VP Vance Acknowledges "Details" to be Resolved on Alaska LNG Investment 

THE GRIFT

File illustration courtesy Alaska LNG

Published Oct 5, 2026 11:26 PM by The Maritime Executive

Just days after President Donald Trump unveiled a multi-billion-dollar South Korean investment in the Alaska LNG pipeline megaproject, officials in Seoul and the United States are walking back the timing and review status of the commitment. On Monday, Vice President JD Vance acknowledged to Reuters that there are still "details" to work out on the agreement. 

Alaska LNG is among the most ambitious infrastructure proposals in the United States, an 800-mile line connecting gas fields on the Artic tundra of the North Slope with a liquefaction plant on the Gulf of Alaska. It would be a big boost for Alaska's economy and state budget, but it would also be a major commitment of capital. At inception, the proposal had big-name backing, at one time boasting involvement from BP, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. All three oil majors backed out by 2016. At present, the investment company Glenfarne Group and the state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corporation are in charge of pursuing permits, investors and customers, with considerable assistance from the state and the White House. 

If built, the project would deliver 20 million tonnes per annum of LNG to buyers in Asian markets, but at considerable financial cost and risk. The pipeline route has to traverse remote, rugged areas of central Alaska, where logistics are difficult and seasonal weather is harsh. With the need to construct a treatment plant at the North Slope side of the project, then build an overland supply pipeline, the megaproject is expected to cost $45-55 billion. This works out to as much as $2.7 billion per mtpa - approaching three times the capex required for Gulf Coast LNG projects, according to Reuters. So far, the sponsors have preliminary commitments for offtake totaling about 13 mtpa - but no binding sales contracts. 

Accordingly, energy analysts and South Korean regulators are looking closely at the financial details. Korea's energy ministry says that it will need a complete commecial feasibility study before it can commit to an investment decision. Multiple analysts predict that the LNG will have be more expensive at the pier because of the capex of the treatment and pipeline system, so other factors will have to determine the decision - like the short shipping distance, the available alternatives in British Columbia, and the strategic benefits of having a new U.S. supplier. 

"Currently, there is no evidence that any entity is willing to fund this project, nor is there any evidence that customers have stepped forward to purchase the gas," one former senior State of Alaska official with experience on Alaska LNG told Chosun Ilbo. 

South Korea's government has stated that the deal described by the White House last week is not yet finalized. "We are initiating a review premised on commercial rationality and domestic legal procedures, and neither the decision on whether to invest nor the scale has been determined," South Korea's Ministry of Trade said in a statement. 

Lawmaker Choi Su-jin of the conservative People Power Party (the country's main opposition party) objected strongly to the terms as currently proposed. Choi told Korean outlet MK that the U.S. government has not historically been willing to underwrite Alaska LNG's performance with its own public funds, and it is unclear why Korea should take on that risk itself. 

"It is a typical unfair and toxic contract in which the South Korean government fully assumes the astronomical funds and risks of $50 billion . . . without any U.S. federal guarantee," Choi said. 

On Friday, President Trump threatened to penalize South Korea's government if it did not follow through on his announcement of a final deal on Alaska LNG. "If they don’t want to do it, that’s OK with me. I’ll just charge them more. Tell them if they don’t sign shortly, I’m going to double it up," Trump told reporters. 

On the same day, he announced an $8.4 billion Korean investment in an enhanced oil recovery project; this was reportedly disputed by South Korea's Industry Ministry, according to Chosun. 

Who Is Going to Pay for Alaska LNG?

By Natalia Katona - Oct 07, 2026

• Washington’s tariff pressure is pushing South Korea toward Alaska LNG, but Seoul’s conditional interest falls short of financing a project costing up to $54 billion.
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• Alaska’s costly pipeline and difficult terrain threaten to outweigh its shipping advantage, with capital costs approaching $2.7 billion per million tonnes of annual LNG capacity.
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• Weakening Korean gas demand and competing Canadian supplies undermine Alaska’s investment case, giving Seoul reasons to seek a less costly way to satisfy Washington.
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Washington’s tariff pressure is giving Alaska LNG something its economics have struggled to secure: a potential investor. Discussed for decades, the costly and technically complex project has regained momentum under President Donald Trump, who is using tariff threats to press foreign partners into backing it. South Korea is now at the centre of that effort, as Seoul’s bid to protect access to the US market becomes a negotiation over financing one of America’s most expensive energy developments.

The question is whether that pressure can produce a commercially viable investment. Washington’s threat of 25% tariffs on Korean exports led to an arrangement, lowering the rate to 15% in exchange for $350 billion in investments and $100 billion in US energy purchases. South Korea’s parliament passed corresponding legislation in March 2026, with negotiations moving toward specific energy projects in September.

On October 1, Seoul outlined potential investments including a 6.47 GW gas-fired power project in Texas serving AI data centres from 2029, and eight US nuclear reactors costing a combined $120 billion, including two using Korea’s APR-1400 design. Alaska LNG was also under review, conditional on commercial and legal requirements being met and that condition is what matters. In September, President Trump had already announced that South Korea was to pay more than $50 billion toward Alaska LNG at an event attended by Alaska officials and Glenfarne Chief Executive Brendan Duval. Seoul’s conditional review falls well short of that commitment.

Owned 75% by Glenfarne and 25% by the state of Alaska, the proposed $45 billion–$54 billion development would transport North Slope gas to domestic consumers and ultimately an export terminal at Nikiski in south-central Alaska. However, the project has a fundamental disadvantage which is in its immense cost of connecting remote reserves to customers: treatment facilities and a roughly 1,300-kilometre (807-mile), pipeline must precede export revenues.

Geography of the project is the main issue. Much of the pipeline would be buried across difficult terrain, including shifting permafrost and mountain crossings reaching 1.5 km (5,000 feet). About 54% can be constructed only during summer, making missed construction windows a significant delay risk. Unresolved state-tax arrangements and domestic cost allocations add uncertainty over who absorbs possible overruns, including whether Alaskan households could face higher gas and electricity bills. Alaska must build exceptionally expensive infrastructure simply to reach the starting point of competing exporters.

Capital intensity approaches $2.7 billion per million tonnes of annual LNG capacity (in comparison to an $898 million/tonne for Qatar’s North Field East and $762 million/tonne for Cheniere’s Corpus Christi Stage 3). Development would proceed in phases, beginning with the pipeline that would feed the local market before the larger export component (first exports are targeted for 2031). This means that financing and cost recovery during the domestic-supply phase is yet another complication for the matter.

Asian commitments have so far been considerably narrower than Trump’s announcements. In July 2025, he said Japan would form an Alaska LNG joint venture under its $550 billion US investment vehicle. Alaska LNG subsequently disappeared from Japan’s list of potential investments. Japanese participation instead centred on an autumn 2025 letter of intent involving Jera and Tokyo Gas to purchase 1 million tonnes of LNG annually for 20 years.

Korea’s Posco International has similarly signed a non-binding agreement to buy 1 million tonnes annually for 20 years and supply a significant share of pipeline steel. Taiwan, Thailand and TotalEnergies have also expressed potential buying interest. Such arrangements indicate demand, but do not settle construction financing or risk allocation.

South Korea nevertheless still has substantial reasons to maintain access to American LNG. Its annual demand of 47.8 million tonnes dwarfs Posco’s proposed Alaska purchases. In 2025, the US supplied 4.4 million tonnes, behind Australia’s 14.7 million, Malaysia’s 7.9 million and Qatar’s 7.2 million. That balance shifted after the US-Iran conflict began in late February and Qatar effectively stopped exporting LNG. Korean imports from the US rose from 200,000 tonnes in March (out of total 3.1 million tonnes), to 1 million tonnes in July (out of 3.7 million tonnes). America became a leading supplier alongside Australia.

Yet greater reliance on US supply coincides with weakening Korean LNG demand. Net-zero policies are gradually reducing consumption, while wartime price increases prompted temporarily higher coal-fired generation and subsequent lower gas burning. Over the summer months, South Korea’s gas-fired power generation fell 9% year-over-year to an average 13 GWh. For reference, Korean coal usage is so far up 18% in 2026 to date, averaging almost 15 GWh throughout January-July. Milder summer temperatures also softened electricity demand during the usual summer and early-autumn peak.

When it comes to competing with European buyers of US LNG, Alaska offers a tangible advantage. US Gulf Coast shipments to South Korea around the Cape of Good Hope take approximately 40–45 days, with current freight estimated at around $42,000/day. Panama offers a shorter route, but transit restrictions, queues and canal charges make it less attractive even in comparison to the Cape of Good Hope route. In contrast, possible Nikiski-to-Korea voyages would take roughly 10–12 days, avoiding canals and major chokepoints.

However, South Korea can already access Pacific LNG without financing Alaska’s pipeline. LNG Canada, the venture backed by Shell, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi and Korea’s own KOGAS, began exports in July 2025 and already shipped 1 million tonnes to Asian markets this September. Its upcoming expansion to 28 million tonnes annually (approved late last month) would increase competition for the buyers Alaska needs. Shorter voyages are valuable, but Alaska has no monopoly on them.

Seoul’s caution therefore predates the current negotiations. Last year, South Korea’s trade and industry minister described Alaska LNG as high risk and an unviable investment option. However, tariff pressure has made repeating that judgment diplomatically harder, without resolving the underlying economics.

For now, Seoul will most likely try to gain time before making a diplomatically risky announcement of not participating in the project. Trump’s signalling of Korean investment into an unspecified $8.4 billion enhanced oil recovery project could offer this alternative. Such projects use injections of steam, gases or chemicals to extract additional crude. Too few details are available to assess this proposal, but it could give Seoul another way to demonstrate investment cooperation while limiting exposure to the commercially questionable Alaska LNG project.

By Natalia Katona for Oilprice.com

Carney accuses US steelmaker of betraying Canadian workers after layoffs tied to Trump tariffs

ROB GILLIES
Updated Tue, September 29, 2026

AP


Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks after LNG Canada said it will go ahead with the Phase 2 expansion project at its LNG terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia, during an announcement in Vancouver, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP) (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP)


TORONTO (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney accused the U.S. owner of steelmaker Stelco, a subsidiary of Cleveland-Cliffs, of betraying Canadian workers Tuesday after it announced layoffs it attributed in part to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs — tariffs Cleveland-Cliffs' chief executive has publicly championed.

Carney singled out Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves, noting that he had applauded Trump's steel tariffs. Goncalves has called the 50% tariffs "a necessary step" to protect U.S. steelmakers.

"Our thoughts are with the workers and the families who have been betrayed by the company," Carney said.

Carney also threatened legal action against Cleveland-Cliffs, saying the Ohio-based company has binding employment obligations stemming from its C$3.4 billion ($2.4 billion) takeover of Stelco in 2024.

Stelco said up to 500 workers could be affected as it indefinitely idles cold-rolled and coated operations at its Hamilton, Ontario, plant and shifts production to its Lake Erie facility in Nanticoke, Ontario.

Cleveland-Cliffs said Monday the move does not shift steel production out of Canada: Output will be concentrated at Stelco's Lake Erie Works in Nanticoke, Ontario, where it expects a significant number of affected Hamilton workers to be absorbed, with overall steel tonnage unchanged.

In a memo to employees, Stelco said U.S. tariffs had "significantly shrunk the market" for its cold-rolled and galvanized products. The company said demand in markets it traditionally serves fell almost 25% in the second quarter compared to the 2024 quarterly average, including a 10% decline in Canada.

The layoffs come amid an escalating Canada-U.S. trade war in which Trump has imposed 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and other goods and Canada has retaliated with tariffs of its own. At a White House event Monday announcing a new $15 billion steel plant in Iowa, Trump credited his tariffs with reducing foreign steel imports and attracting investment to the United States, saying companies were building plants there "because they don't want to pay tariffs."

Carney said the federal government had offered financial assistance to preserve jobs but did not disclose the amount or terms.

"There's money on the table from the federal government," Carney said. "The company made representations and has legal obligations for employment. We intend to use all powers that we have and pursue them to the fullest extent of the law."

The Canadian government approved Cleveland-Cliffs' takeover of Stelco in October 2024 on the condition that it meet legally binding five-year employment commitments, including maintaining at least the same number of unionized workers and the vast majority of nonunion employees.

Cleveland-Cliffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Carney's remarks.

Hamilton steel plant to lay off hundreds of workers as U.S. tariffs prompt 'survival' move

CBC
Mon, September 28, 2026

Stelco Hamilton Works production facility is seen in September 2024. Stelco said it will indefinitely idle its cold-rolled and coated operations at its Hamilton Works plant on Monday. (Patrick Morrell/CBC - image credit)


Stelco Holdings Inc. said on Monday that it plans to idle part of its Hamilton plant in order to "ensure the survival" of the company, as U.S. tariffs squeeze its sales.

Stelco said the decision will impact up to 500 employees.

In a memo obtained by CBC News on Monday, the company said it will indefinitely idle its cold-rolled and coated operations at its Hamilton Works plant, with operations set to begin winding down on Oct. 9.

Ron Wells, president of United Steelworkers Local 1005, estimates 350 steelworkers will be laid off. He says he was briefed on the situation in a meeting with the company on Monday morning.

"Obviously, we got to meet with the company, and find out who's getting laid off, [and] make sure it's done by seniority," Wells told CBC News on Monday. "Christmas ain't that far away, and we have no idea the duration of these layoffs … People are concerned. I don't blame them."

The company said this will not impact its ability to supply hot-rolled steel products.

"This is an unfortunate but necessary action to help ensure the survival of Stelco in what has become a challenging and unsustainable market for cold-rolled and coated products caused by the ongoing and sustained trade disruptions impacting the Canadian steel industry," Stelco vice-president of sales Frederic Fafard stated in the memo.

An aerial photo of the Stelco Hamilton steel production facility. (Patrick Morrell/CBC)

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in June applying up to 50 per cent tariffs to certain steel and aluminum imports from Canada.

"Stelco's market for cold-rolled and galvanized products has contracted significantly, while import penetration for these products remains at heightened levels," Fafard said in the memo.

"While the measures taken by the federal government in Canada have served to reduce imports into Canada overall, import volumes remain at levels that prevent Stelco from being able to bridge the gap in the market created by the trade crisis."

Ohio-based Cleveland-Cliffs acquired Hamilton-based Stelco in a $3.4-billion Cdn cash-and-stock deal that closed in November 2024. In a news release announcing the deal, Stelco's then-CEO Alan Kestenbaum stated the transaction "keeps national interests at the forefront and recognizes the importance of the workforce."

"We're very disappointed," Wells said. "In particular, when Cliffs bought us in the fall of 2024, they made commitments. One of those commitments was to maintain the same number of unionized employees."

In an email to CBC News on Monday, a Cleveland-Cliffs spokesperson confirmed Joly has been in touch with chairman and CEO Lourenco Goncalves.

"Both Cliffs and the Canadian government have the interests of the Stelco workers in mind, and will continue to work together to minimize the impact of the current market situation on Canadian workers," wrote Pat Persico, the company's senior director of corporate communications.

She said that while Stelco is idling some of its operations in Hamilton, the company's total output of steel will not be impacted as it consolidates production at its Lake Erie Works.

"Very importantly, job opportunities at Lake Erie Works will be offered to Hamilton employees," Persico wrote in a previous email.

"We expect that a significant number of employees affected by the indefinite idle at Hamilton should be absorbed at Lake Erie Works."

Wells told CBC News on Tuesday that his union was informed that 46 positions would be offered.

Industry Minister 'extremely disappointed'

In a statement on Monday, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly slammed the decision to lay off workers, while noting Ottawa had offered to help Stelco weather the impact of U.S. tariffs.

"Our government has made clear to the company that we are ready and willing to provide financial support to sustain operations and protect jobs. Its decision to reject these practical proposals and continue with layoffs is extremely disappointing," she said.

"Stelco and Cleveland-Cliffs have made significant commitments to Canadian steelworkers. We will use every lever possible to defend Canadian industry, protect jobs, and secure our supply chain."

Trump announces new steel plant in Iowa

On Monday, U.S. President Trump touted a new $15-billion US investment plan by Minnesota-based steelmaker Mesabi Metallics as evidence that American tariffs on imported steel are working as his administration intended.

The company announced plans to build a massive plant in Iowa, with production set to begin in 2030.

"I imposed powerful 50 per cent tariffs on all foreign steel, and now our steel industry is roaring back to life." Trump said at a news announcement in the Oval Office. "Everyone is building their plant here because they don't want to pay tariffs. It's really not that complicated."

The move is raising concerns north of the border, where Kevon Stewart, director of United Steelworkers District 6, said his phone has been lighting up with calls from distressed Canadian workers.

"Everything is timing right now," he told CBC News on Monday.

"This is not only a wake-up call, because the call for action has been there before. But we've got to come up with a game plan that ensures workers are protected if and when these measures are implemented."

He said such protections could include increased benefits, or removing the waiting time for benefits.

Colin Mang, an economist at McMaster University in Hamilton, said the layoffs announced Monday are "a consequence of our trade war with the United States." For Stelco, he said the situation is worsened by a steady flow of foreign products coming into Canada.

"The lack of access to the American market has meant that we have a surplus of steel production capacity here in Canada, and there just isn't enough domestic Canadian demand in order to absorb all of the output from the steelmakers here," Mang told CBC News.

"The Canadian government has worked to restrict the amount of steel coming into Canada, but when you look at a variety of steel products, particularly the kinds of flat products that Stelco manufactures, Canada has imported about 1.2 million tons from other trading partners around the world. That's because we continue to have free trade agreements with a variety of countries. So, it's very difficult to restrict imports from our other trading partners."

Blair Dickerson, president of the Canadian Steel Producers Association, said his thoughts are with the workers impacted by Monday's announcement. He also called upon Canada's federal government and the Trump to resolve their ongoing trade tension.

"Days like today demonstrate how challenging the tariff situation is, and provide a stark reminder as to the urgency of finding a solution," Dickerson said in an email.

"Recognizing the Government's support to date, Canada must continue and deepen the work of keeping unfairly traded steel out of our market, enforcing our measures at the border, and ensuring our producers can be competitive here at home."

Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath said she plans to fight to ensure Stelco and Cleveland-Cliffs live up to the commitments their executives made to workers in her city.

"The fight is not over," she told the CBC's As It Happens radio program on Monday

"This particular company has been very clear ... that they support Donald Trump and his tariffs, and desire to pull all steelmaking back into the United States.

Wells, president of United Steelworkers Local 1005, said it's ironic for a company's whose leadership supports Trump to criticize U.S. tariffs for eroding its business.

"The CEO, Lourenco Goncalves, he's the biggest supporter of Trump and his tariffs. So, it's tough to have any sympathy when you know they're the basically the master of this disaster."

Cleveland-Cliffs slides as report shows Stelco idling plant over US tariffs

Luke Juricic
Mon, September 28, 2026 


Investing.com -- Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. shares tumbled nearly 8% in late Monday trading following reports that its Canadian subsidiary, Stelco Holdings Inc., plans to halt operations at a key Ontario processing facility. The decline reflects growing market concern over the compounding toll of trade frictions on North American steel supply chains.

According to a letter to customers obtained by Bloomberg News, Stelco expects to indefinitely idle its cold-rolled and coated operations at Hamilton Works in the coming weeks. The move highlights the acute pressures facing Canadian steelmakers as elevated U.S. import tariffs continue to disrupt regional trade flows and contract domestic demand for downstream products.

The operational curtailment marks a significant setback for the Canadian steel sector, which has struggled to adjust since the U.S. maintained a 50% tariff under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. While Ottawa implemented countermeasures to curb foreign imports, Stelco noted that those actions proved insufficient to offset the market contraction triggered by restricted access to the U.S. market.

To mitigate the fallout, Cleveland-Cliffs is restructuring its operational footprint by shifting primary manufacturing focus to its more integrated Lake Erie Works facility in Nanticoke, Ontario. In an emailed statement sent to Bloomberg, Cliffs spokesperson Patricia Persico emphasized that total steel output will remain unchanged, though the product mix will pivot toward a higher concentration of hot-rolled coil.

The wind-down at the Hamilton facility is scheduled to begin on Oct. 9 and is expected to result in approximately 350 job cuts, according to local reporting from the Hamilton Spectator. Because Hamilton Works functions primarily as a downstream finishing plant, concentrating upstream production at Lake Erie Works allows the parent company to preserve overall tonnage while curtailing higher-cost processing lines.

Stelco assured clients that it will honor existing customer orders during the transition while maintaining full capacity for hot-rolled steel deliveries. Investors, however, appear focused on broader margin compression, watching closely to see whether Cleveland-Cliffs can successfully absorb trade-driven demand shifts without sacrificing profitability across its expanded North American network.

Why Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF) Dipped More Than Broader Market Today

Zacks Equity Research
Mon, September 28, 2026


Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF) ended the recent trading session at $11.22, demonstrating a -7.88% change from the preceding day's closing price. This change lagged the S&P 500's 0.77% loss on the day. Elsewhere, the Dow lost 0.67%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.92%.

Shares of the mining company witnessed a gain of 4.82% over the previous month, beating the performance of the Basic Materials sector with its loss of 9.1%, and the S&P 500's gain of 0.96%.


Market participants will be closely following the financial results of Cleveland-Cliffs in its upcoming release. In that report, analysts expect Cleveland-Cliffs to post earnings of $0.24 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 153.33%. In the meantime, our current consensus estimate forecasts the revenue to be $5.6 billion, indicating a 18.25% growth compared to the corresponding quarter of the prior year.

Regarding the entire year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates forecast earnings of -$0.04 per share and revenue of $21.1 billion, indicating changes of +98.39% and +13.4%, respectively, compared to the previous year.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for Cleveland-Cliffs. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. Hence, positive alterations in estimates signify analyst optimism regarding the business and profitability.

Empirical research indicates that these revisions in estimates have a direct correlation with impending stock price performance. To exploit this, we've formed the Zacks Rank, a quantitative model that includes these estimate changes and presents a viable rating system.

The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has witnessed a 7.69% increase. As of now, Cleveland-Cliffs holds a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

The Steel - Producers industry is part of the Basic Materials sector. With its current Zacks Industry Rank of 68, this industry ranks in the top 28% of all industries, numbering over 250.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Trump unveils plans to build $15B steel mill in Iowa

U.S. President Donald Trump answers questions from reporters during an announcement in the Oval Office at the White House on Sept. 28, 2026 in Washington, DC. He shared plans to build a $15 billion steel plant spearheaded by Mesabi Metallics. · Manufacturing Dive · Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images

Nathan Owens
Tue, September 29, 2026 
 Manufacturing Dive. 

Dive Brief:

President Donald Trump on Monday announced a Minnesota steelmaker's plans to invest $15 billion in Iowa to build what would become the largest U.S. steel mill.


The Mesabi Metallics-led project will create 1,750 jobs and add 10 million tons of annual steel production capacity, Trump said at the Oval Office. It is also expected to generate $95 billion for the U.S. economy during construction and the first 10 years of operations.


The company, which is backed by India-based conglomerate Essar Group, recently opened an iron ore mine in Minnesota that will supply pellets to the Iowa mill once completed. Steel production is set to begin in 2030, Trump said. Federal and state funding details have yet to be disclosed.


Dive Insight:

The Trump administration has made domestic metals production a top priority, citing national security and military supply concerns amid a war with Iran.

At the same time, Trump's tariff strategy has cut imports of foreign steel and raised U.S. steel prices. He doubled the Section 232 rate on metal imports to 50% last summer and has since made adjustments to close loopholes and allow exemptions for certain products.

On the other hand, higher raw material costs are squeezing manufacturers and resulting in higher prices for consumers. Higher tariffs also helped the United States surpass Japan last year as a crude steel producer for the first time since 1999.

"Our steel industry is roaring back to life," Trump said Monday. "Everyone's building their plant here because they don't want to pay tariffs."

Mesabi Metallics plans to use electric arc furnace technology along with recycled scrap and direct-reduced iron mined from Minnesota to produce U.S. steel in Iowa, according to its news release. It is the company's first steel mill project and billed as the largest in U.S. history. The project is also expected to create 6,000 construction jobs.


In addition to the $15 billion investment, Mesabi Metallics has agreed to spend an additional $3 billion to complete its iron ore mine in Nashwauk, Minnesota. More than 1,500 construction workers are already on site there, along with 200 employees, with the goal of upstarting operations to make what the company is calling Patriot Pellets.

"This is a major moment for U.S. made steel," Mesabi Metallics CEO Joe Broking said in a statement.

Federal and state funding details were limited at the White House. Trump said "we're doing very little" from the public sector. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick added that the "deal is done" and is being funded by private money. Whether the project was approved for any state incentives is unclear.


The Iowa mill is one of several projects supported by Trump to bolster domestic metals production. Last year, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry joined the president at the White House to announce Hyundai Steel Company's $5.8 billion steel mill plans. Trump also expressed strong support for a $4 billion aluminum smelter coming to Oklahoma that is led by Emirates Global Aluminum and Century Aluminum.


Both projects have received strong pushback from local residents and advocacy groups who raised environmental and nuisance concerns.

Hyundai Steel held a groundbreaking for its Louisiana mill on Sept. 4. The aluminum smelter has been delayed until April 2027 after Inola's town council voted to extend its initial 60-day pause, the Oklahoma Voice reported. The project's developer followed up the decision with an economic impact study, highlighting the job creation and money generation opportunities.

"We're doing a tremendous aluminum plant in Oklahoma, one of my favorite places in the whole world," Trump said. "That's going to be unbelieveable."

Recommended Reading

Hyundai Steel project moves ahead despite local pushback

Mesabi plans $18bn investment to combine iron ore mine and steel complex

Mesabi announced the project during an event at the White House. 

Credit: Mesabi Metallics. 

Shree Mishra
Tue, September 29, 2026 

Essar Group-backed Mesabi Metallics has announced a $18bn investment to establish a fully integrated steel operation, combining its iron ore mine on the Mesabi Iron Range in Minnesota with a proposed steel-making complex in Iowa, US.

The company revealed details of the project during an event at the White House.

Of the total, $3bn is earmarked for completing the iron ore mine in Nashwauk, while $15bn is allocated to the development of the new Iowa steel complex.

The project aims to create more than 8,000 jobs, including in excess of 6,000 construction roles for the Iowa complex and 1,750 permanent positions at full operation.

More than 1,500 construction workers and 200 full-time employees are currently on-site in Nashwauk, with plans to reach 350 permanent roles once the mine becomes fully operational.

Mesabi CEO Joe Broking said: "This is a major moment for US-made steel, combining the highest quality direct-reduction grade iron ore pellet from Minnesota's Iron Range with the most advanced DRI [direct reduced iron] to EAF [electric arc furnace] steel-making technology in Iowa to supply the high-quality, all-American steel that our national defence, cars and trucks, shipbuilding, household appliances, energy and infrastructure depend on."

The Nashwauk operation, situated on the Mesabi Iron Range, is said to be the first new iron ore mine constructed in the US in 50 years.


Iron ore sourced from the Minnesota site will be used to manufacture direct-reduction-grade iron ore pellets, called 'Patriot Pellets', intended for use in the Iowa steel facility's production process.

At the Iowa complex, EAFs will be fed with a combination of hot, freshly reduced iron from the plant's own direct-reduction process and scrap steel.

By using iron ore that has had its oxygen removed at temperatures below melting point and feeding the resulting metallic iron into the furnaces while still hot, the process is designed to cut energy consumption and lower emissions compared with conventional blast furnace methods.

The company estimated that over the construction period and the first ten years of full operations, the investment would produce $95bn in total economic output across the region.

According to Mesabi, this integrated approach aims to develop a fully domestic steel supply chain, with all major production steps based in the US.

In April 2026, Mesabi obtained $150m in funding from the Macquarie Group for its iron ore mine and pellet plant in the US.

A $15 Billion Iowa Steel Mill Is Coming. What It Means for Nucor and Cleveland-Cliffs

Omor Ibne Ehsan
Tue, September 29, 2026 

Key takeaways

The White House announced the construction of a $15 billion steel mill in Iowa by Mesabi Metallics, which will start production at 7.5 million tons a year and rise to about 10 million tons by 2030.

Quick Read

The $15B Iowa mill mirrors NUE's electric arc furnace model, pressuring CLF's higher-cost integrated operations when first steel arrives in 2030.


CLF dropped nearly 8% after Stelco indefinitely idled Canadian operations, showing how tariffs that prop up U.S. prices simultaneously shrank Cliffs abroad.


On Monday, September 28, 2026, The White House announced that Mesabi Metallics will build a $15 billion steel mill in Iowa, starting at 7.5 million tons a year and rising to about 10 million tons. Mesabi is privately held and foreign-owned, so you cannot buy shares in it.

andresr / Getty Images

For Nucor (NYSE:NUE) and Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE:CLF), the plant pressures price. First steel is expected in 2030, making this a valuation question today and an earnings question later, according to Mining.com.
Iowa Will Use the Electric Furnace Route Nucor Already Runs

The mill will convert iron ore into direct reduced iron and melt it in electric arc furnaces. Nucor already runs electric arc furnaces, while Cleveland-Cliffs operates traditional integrated operations that management describes as "miners, pellet producers, iron makers, steel makers, and downstream manufacturers."

The planned output is at about one-tenth of last year's U.S. steel production. The Export-Import Bank of the United States announced a $770 million direct loan for the associated Minnesota iron ore mine, and administration officials tied the project to steel tariffs.

Cleveland-Cliffs already dropped 7.84% on September 28 after its Canadian unit, Stelco, reported plans to indefinitely idle cold-rolled and coated operations at Hamilton Works, affecting about 350 jobs. Stelco blamed the 50% U.S. tariff on Canadian steel.

Tariffs cut both ways. The regime propping up U.S. prices shrank Cliffs in Canada. Nucor fell 1.1% that day, a decline likely tied to the Iowa project.

Nucor Stays Profitable While Cliffs Is Still Rebuilding

Nucor reported second-quarter adjusted EPS of $4.84 on $10.4 billion in sales. Its weak spot is expectations: on September 17, Nucor guided third-quarter EPS to $5.55 to $5.65, missing the $6.20 consensus, and shares fell about 5.8% the next day.

NUE Earnings Explorer — 24/7 Wall St.

Cleveland-Cliffs lost $0.25 a share in the second quarter after a full-year 2025 loss of $1.4 billion. Cleveland-Cliffs guided third-quarter adjusted EBITDA to about $575 million from $286 million, suggesting a floor is forming, although $7.7 billion of long-term debt leaves little room for a price war when the first-steel date arrives around 2030.


CLF Earnings Explorer — 24/7 Wall St.



Lens

Nucor

Cleveland-Cliffs

Steelmaking process

Electric arc furnaces

Integrated blast furnaces


Q2 per-share result

$4.84 adjusted EPS, according to Nucor

$0.25 loss


Year-to-date stock move

50.77%

-15.51%


Nucor screens better than Cleveland-Cliffs on this setup: Iowa mirrors Nucor's electric-furnace model, while integrated producers carry higher fixed costs. Nucor has gained 50.77% this year yet trades near 11 times forward earnings, with $244.52 under the average analyst target of $283.63.

NUE Price Target — 24/7 Wall St.

Cliffs, at $11.23 and down 43.67% over five years, needs contract resets and debt paydown before Iowa's output arrives. If management hits its leverage target of under 2.5x debt to EBITDA by mid-2027, or Nucor misses guidance, reconsider the ranking. I'd tag NUE stock a buy, and I'd avoid CLF stock for now.

CLF Price Target — 24/7 Wall St.

Nucor (NUE) Moves To Join FERC Fight Over MISO Power Rules

Bailey Pemberton
Tue, September 29, 2026 



NUE-0.82%

STLD+0.11%


Nucor (NYSE:NUE) and Steel Dynamics jointly filed a motion to intervene with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on the MISO footprint.

The filing signals both steel producers are seeking a formal voice in how electricity market rules apply within the MISO region.

The move focuses attention on power market design for large industrial users that rely heavily on MISO for long term electricity needs.

This joint FERC intervention on the MISO footprint sits against broader energy market pressures our research has been tracking for Nucor. We have also flagged 1 warning sign for Nucor.

NYSE:NUE Earnings & Revenue Growth as at Sep 2026

Nucor is a US-based steel producer in the Metals and Mining industry with a market value of about $56.1b, so electricity rules inside the MISO footprint directly affect how its mills power energy-intensive steelmaking operations. The motion with regulators ties into core manufacturing costs for the business rather than a side issue.

Why Nucor wants a direct say in its power costs

For Nucor, stepping into the MISO rulemaking process lines up with the earnings story that now leans heavily on new mills and downstream assets turning into steady cash generators. Power pricing and reliability feed directly into whether those projects support the kind of margin profile analysts are watching in the multi year US$15b to US$20b capital program. This move also fits with the broader theme of Nucor working on inputs it can influence, rather than just accepting pass through energy costs as a fixed constraint.

See how these catalysts shape Nucor's path to a $284 fair value.

The practical checkpoint is what comes out of this specific FERC proceeding. Investors can watch for the next formal MISO or FERC filing that references Nucor or Steel Dynamics as intervenors, and any decision that lays out new tariff structures or market rules for large industrial users inside the MISO footprint.

One piece of the Nucor puzzle this article has not opened yet

Power contracts and mill projects only tell part of the story. Who actually calls the shots at Nucor, and what they are rewarded for delivering, can reshape how you read everything else. 

See who is actually steering Nucor, and how they are paid.