When the average gasoline price crossed the $5 mark for the first time in Alaska in 2022, Republican US Sen. Dan Sullivan wasted little time ripping into President Joe Biden and the “radical left’s destructive anti-American energy agenda.”
“Today, Americans, especially in my home state of Alaska, are paying the price for Joe Biden’s destructive energy policies,” he said in a news release accompanied by a link to AAA’s fuel price tracker.
This week, that tracker shows Alaska has hit an all-time high for diesel—an average of $6.14 per gallon—thanks to a sharp leap in oil prices following the latest escalation in President Donald Trump’s war with Iran. The latest fighting has hit diesel production particularly hard, but fuel prices are up across the board.
Gasoline prices currently average about $5.05 in Alaska, with some rural communities already locked in paying nearly six times that amount for months.
But where Sullivan was once full of vitriol at a Democratic president—claiming high oil prices were an intentional plot to trick people into using renewable energy—he has refused to say anything about the current spike in prices that would put him out of line with President Trump. Sullivan has long been a reliable Trump ally and has voted in lockstep with Trump-aligned Republicans against efforts to limit the president’s war with Iran.
If and when Sullivan does talk about high energy costs in Alaska, it’s a lot less like his 20-minute speech in 2022, complete with a Joe Biden “I did that” sticker, and a lot more like the video his office released on Sept. 1 with US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, where high energy prices are treated more like a long-term policy problem than the result of a war without a clear goal.
“We’re working on a whole host of issues,” Sullivan said, rattling off high energy costs along with the need to develop a large-diameter natural gas pipeline, before turning to Wright to heap some praise: “You’re doing such a great job for our state, for our country.”
Wright, for his part, says, “Alaska’s got unique challenges but unique opportunities.”
The soft-handed approach to the Trump administration is nothing new for Sullivan, but takes on new importance as he finds himself in a tough re-election battle with Democrat Mary Peltola, who has made energy and rising prices key issues in her campaign.
It should also be noted that, when it comes to advocating for oil and gas production, Sullivan and Peltola tend to agree more than they disagree. As Alaska’s US representative, Peltola played a key role in securing the Biden administration’s approval of the Willow project and has made expanding oil and gas development a key part of her agenda.
It’s put Sullivan on the defensive, and he’s spent much of his time this year trying to reframe the broad strokes of the Republican agenda—which have largely been cuts to fund tax cuts for the wealthy—as positive for working-class Alaskans. For example, you’ll never hear him call Republicans’ 2025 legislation win the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which was the bill’s actual name, but instead the “Working Families Tax Cuts Act,” a phrase he used more than two dozen times in his 2026 address to the Legislature.
But for all the effort that Sullivan has made to play nice with Trump, Trump hasn’t exactly repaid him or other Republicans who are up for re-election this year many favors.
This week, Trump said that oil prices will likely stay high through this year’s midterm elections, and Vice President JD Vance made headlines for suggesting that Americans should be grateful that prices aren’t even higher.
The rising costs due to the war with Iran, alongside new economic headaches from Trump’s latest trade war with Canada—which effectively cut off the supply of Crown Royal and other spirits made in Canada—have forced businesses in Alaska that buy from and sell to Canada to rethink how they do business.
While Alaska imports about $1.3 billion in Canadian goods annually and sells over $600 million to Canada, Sullivan has often sided with Trump. That includes him threatening Canadian officials during a 2025 talk radio appearance, where he said he’d push to suspend a law requiring Alaskan cruises to stop in Canada.
“You know, Canada, you don’t want to mess with Alaska,” Sullivan said at the time. “If you do, we’re going to work hard on having our cruise ships bypass your ports
According to the Anchorage Daily News, the trade war is taking its toll on Alaskans’ pocketbooks—and their hockey rinks. The Anchorage-based Play It Again Sports stopped buying hockey pucks from a Canadian manufacturer, and other prices will have to go up.
“The tariffs are hitting us,” Don Bruno, who owns the Play It Again Sports stores in Spenard and Wasilla, told the newspaper. “I mean, it’s from hockey jerseys to everything.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
