This week's intelligence opens with a milestone Alaska LNG gas supply agreement that clears the final commercial obstacle to a Phase One final investment decision on the 20 MTPA project. NextEra Energy announces a $66.8 billion all stock acquisition of Dominion Energy that would create the largest regulated electric utility in the world, an outright bet on AI driven data center load. The Associated General Contractors of America publishes its annual metro employment data with Houston leading the country at 10,600 new construction jobs and Baton Rouge posting the strongest percentage gain among large metros. ABC reports the national March construction unemployment rate at 6.7 percent, and Energy Transfer quietly withdraws the air permit for its $1.8 billion Nederland ethane cracker.
Alaska LNG Phase One Clears Final Gas Supply Hurdle
Glenfarne Alaska LNG announced on May 18 that it has signed a 30 year gas sales precedent agreement with ConocoPhillips Alaska to supply North Slope natural gas to Phase One of the Alaska LNG project. With the ConocoPhillips agreement, Alaska LNG now holds active gas sales precedent agreements with all three major North Slope producers, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Hilcorp Alaska, together with Great Bear Pantheon, a subsidiary of Pantheon Resources. Adam Prestidge, President of Glenfarne Alaska LNG, said that all major North Slope producers have now committed enough natural gas to support a Phase One final investment decision and supply enough gas to meet Alaska's domestic energy needs.
The Alaska LNG project is split into two financially independent phases. Phase One is a 739 mile, 42 inch diameter natural gas pipeline running from the North Slope to Southcentral Alaska, with tie backs to existing midstream infrastructure. Phase One is engineered to deliver gas to Alaska consumers and address the looming Cook Inlet production decline. Phase Two adds the 20 MTPA liquefaction and export terminal at Nikiski on the Kenai Peninsula. Glenfarne owns 75 percent of Alaska LNG, with the State of Alaska owning the remaining 25 percent through the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation.
For an LNG project that has been on and off the drawing board for more than a decade, this is the cleanest commercial milestone the project has produced. The North Slope holds proven reserves of more than 30 trillion cubic feet of stranded natural gas, and Phase One unlocks that resource for Alaskan consumers while building the infrastructure spine that Phase Two needs to monetize the export volumes. The pipeline alone is an industrial construction project of historic scale.
NextEra to Acquire Dominion Energy in $66.8 Billion All Stock Deal
NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy announced on May 18 an all stock transaction in which NextEra will acquire Dominion in a deal valued at approximately $66.8 billion. The combined company would become the largest regulated electric utility in the world by market capitalization and the largest in the United States by customers served. The transaction is the most significant utility merger in US history.
The strategic logic is straightforward and entirely about AI. Dominion serves Virginia's Loudoun County and Prince William County, the world's densest concentration of data centers, with approximately 51 gigawatts of contracted data center capacity already in the queue. NextEra brings the country's largest renewable generation fleet, the strongest balance sheet in the regulated utility sector, and the operational depth to build new capacity faster than any other competitor. Together, the two companies own the most direct path to powering the next decade of US hyperscale buildout.
The deal also reflects how quickly the industrial logic of the power sector has shifted. Five years ago, regulated utilities were defensive yield investments and renewable developers were growth stories on the margin. Today, the bottleneck on hyperscale AI infrastructure is firm dispatchable generation, transmission interconnection, and the engineering and construction capacity to deliver both. NextEra Dominion solves all three at once.
AGC Metro Data: Houston Adds 10,600 Construction Jobs, Baton Rouge Up 10 Percent
The Associated General Contractors of America released its annual metro employment analysis on May 19, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data through March 2026. Construction employment rose in 166 of 360 metro areas, or 46 percent, declined in 151, and held flat in 43. The headline result is Houston. The Houston, Pasadena, Woodlands metro added 10,600 construction jobs over the year, a 4 percent gain, the largest absolute increase in the country.
Beneath the Houston headline, the rest of the leaderboard reads like a map of the industrial build. St. Louis added 6,700 jobs (9 percent). Charlotte added 5,000 jobs (6 percent). Baton Rouge added 5,000 jobs (10 percent), the strongest percentage gain among major metros. Austin added 4,600 jobs (5 percent). Idaho Falls posted the steepest percentage gain at 15 percent. On the other side of the ledger, New York City lost 5,400 construction jobs, Portland lost 4,900, and Los Angeles County lost 3,400.
The geographic story is unmistakable. The US construction labor market is bifurcating along industrial corridor lines. Texas and Louisiana, where LNG, refining, petrochemicals, semiconductors, and data centers are stacking on top of each other, are absorbing labor at a pace the rest of the country is not. AMECO underscored that point this week, announcing the opening of a new Baton Rouge facility to expand its Gulf Coast construction equipment, formwork, scaffolding, and site services support, citing the depth of regional industrial projects underway.
ABC: National March Construction Unemployment at 6.7 Percent, 44 States Below 10 Percent
The Associated Builders and Contractors released its state by state analysis of March 2026 construction unemployment data on May 18. The national not seasonally adjusted construction unemployment rate stood at 6.7 percent in March, up 1.3 percentage points from March 2025. Forty four states posted construction unemployment rates below 10 percent. Only six states ran above that threshold, and most of those were colder northern states still working through seasonal effects.
The deeper story is in nonresidential employment. Nonresidential construction added 19,000 jobs in April, with all three subcategories contributing. Nonresidential specialty trade contractors added 12,600 jobs, nonresidential building added 5,600, and heavy and civil engineering added 800. ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu noted that nonresidential construction employment is up 2.0 percent year over year, with the strength traceable directly to data center construction spending, which is up 34 percent over the past year.
The labor picture is the same one we have been reading all year. Hiring is slow because workers are not available, not because owners are not asking. Quits are near record lows. Backlogs are at the highest level since mid 2024. The nonresidential side is humming. The residential side is dragging the headline numbers down. And the structural shortage that ABC has been forecasting, 349,000 net new workers needed in 2026 and 456,000 in 2027, is showing up exactly where it was always going to show up first, in the industrial belt where the work cannot wait.
Energy Transfer Withdraws Permit for $1.8 Billion Nederland Ethane Cracker
Energy Transfer quietly withdrew its air permit application for the proposed $1.8 billion petrochemical complex in Jefferson County, Texas, in early May. The withdrawal letter, dated May 6 and addressed to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, offered no explanation. The TCEQ executive director had previously determined the application met applicable legal requirements, and commissioners were scheduled to take up the application on June 17.
The planned facility was an ethane cracking complex on undeveloped land near Nederland, designed to convert ethane into ethylene and propylene, the basic feedstocks for plastics. The withdrawal is meaningful because it lands in the middle of an otherwise constructive period for US petrochemical investment, and because Energy Transfer is one of the most disciplined midstream operators in the country. Permit withdrawals at this stage typically reflect either a recalculation of project economics, a shift in offtake strategy, or a decision to relocate the scope to an existing site with better integration.
The broader petrochemical buildout continues. There are now approximately 100 active petrochemical project announcements in the United States, the bulk of them concentrated along the Gulf Coast and in the Ohio Valley. The Nederland pause is a single data point, not a trend reversal, but it is a useful reminder that even in a strong capital environment, project economics still have to clear.
The Bottom Line
Alaska LNG clears the last commercial gate on its Phase One FID, opening the door to a 739 mile pipeline and a 20 MTPA export terminal. NextEra and Dominion announce the largest utility merger in US history, an outright bet that the next decade of growth runs through the wires and turbines that feed AI data centers. Houston, Baton Rouge, and the broader Gulf Coast corridor continue to absorb skilled construction labor at a pace no other US region can match. National construction unemployment sits at 6.7 percent with the industrial belt running structurally tighter. Energy Transfer pauses Nederland, freeing capacity in a fabrication market that is otherwise running flat out.
The signal across all five stories is the same. American industrial capital is being deployed at a scale and a cadence that the construction workforce, the fabrication base, and the equipment supply chain cannot meet on their current trajectory. The owners and EPCs who plan ahead, lock in capacity, and partner with vertically integrated execution platforms are the ones who finish on schedule and on budget. PSV Industries is built for this environment, and 2026 is the year that fact starts showing up in the numbers.