Inside Alaska Business
Circle K
Rebranding of Holiday Stationstores under the Circle K banner this spring was not such a big change as it might’ve appeared. Both gas station convenience stores are owned by the same parent company, Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard. The worldwide retailer has owned Circle K since 2003 and the Holiday brand since 2017. Although new to Alaska, Circle K has the most company-operated locations of any convenience store chain in the US, with more than 7,000 (compared to about 9,000 for 7-Eleven, which uses a franchise model). Among those are 17 Anchorage locations and 2 in Wasilla.
Great Alaskan Holidays
Adding to its sales fleet, Great Alaskan Holidays is now the exclusive dealer of Newmar RVs in the state. Newmar is an Indiana-based luxury RV company, acquired by Winnebago in 2019. Great Alaskan Holidays now offers both Winnebago and Newmar floor plans in its fleet of new vehicles for sale, as well as Forest River Foresters in its inventory of used Class C’s and Minnie Winnie and Solis camper vans in its rental fleet. “This is a significant change for our organization, going from one major vendor in our supply chain to two,” says Bob Johnson, Great Alaskan Holidays’ director of marketing. “Doing so in direct response to customer feedback gives us the opportunity to provide our customers a high-quality RV at a totally unique and affordable price point.”
Three Bears Alaska
After having no local grocery store for two years, Delta Junction is seeing a surge. Shortly after the rebuilt IGA Food Cache opened in March, Three Bears Alaska began working on its new location across the Richardson Highway. The Wasilla-based supermarket chain is tearing down the Buffalo Center Service Station and nearby convenience store to make room for a 28,000-square-foot store on the 3.5-acre property. It would be the twenty-second Three Bears location (including one store in Butte, Montana). The company has been in expansion mode since 2022, when a Seattle-based private equity firm injected some investment capital. Last year, Three Bears opened gas station convenience stores in Ester and North Pole, and a larger retail complex in North Pole is under development as well.
Armstrong Oil & Gas
Exploration drilling on the North Slope over the winter produced positive results for Colorado-based Armstrong Oil & Gas. Its affiliate company, Lagniappe, drilled three wells on behalf of joint venture partners that also include APA Alaska and Santos affiliate Oil Search (Alaska). Two of them did not reach target depth due to harsh weather conditions, but the third found hydrocarbon zones at 8,130 feet and 9,850 feet deep. The wells southeast of Prudhoe Bay extend the known reach of the Brookian topset, an oil-bearing stratum that owner Bill Armstrong discovered in 2013 that has since led to the Willow and Pikka developments.
Pantheon Resources
A proposed liquified natural gas (LNG) pipeline need not start all the way at Prudhoe Bay. South of the state’s largest oil field, Pantheon Resources is developing a new field along the Dalton Highway. The company acquired leases last December for the Ahpun field, which contains the Talitha-A and Alkaid units explored by its Great Bear Petroleum subsidiary. Pantheon agreed in June with the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation to supply up to 500 million cubic feet per day at the Ahpun natural gas plant—subject to regulatory approvals and, crucially, a go-ahead on the long-sought LNG pipeline. Still, the parties are aiming for a 2029 delivery date. Cashflow from Ahpun would help Pantheon develop another new field, Kodiak, to the west. A final investment decision for Ahpun is scheduled for next year.
Coffman Engineers
After operating in downtown Anchorage for more than forty years, Coffman Engineers moved to Midtown in the spring. Offices in the Wells Fargo building at Northern Lights Boulevard and C Street accommodate Coffman’s growth, with more meeting space for collaboration. Coffman Engineers is a multidiscipline consulting firm with twenty-one offices across the country.
Akima
A technology services company owned by Akima, a subsidiary of NANA regional corporation, was selected as one of two awardees of a communications and enterprise IT support services contract with the US Air Force. The contract with Akima Global Technology has an estimated value of $750 million over its ten-year term. The contract involves a service desk supporting 4,500 employees across thirty-seven networks, replacing IT hardware, providing cybersecurity support such as software vulnerability testing, and end-point security for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center’s IT enterprise. Services will be delivered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Springfield Air National Guard Base, both in Ohio.