The $2.94 billion state capital budget for fiscal year 2013 approved in the closing hours of the 2012 legislative session is chock-full of projects. The good news, however, is that the spending total is within the range that Gov. Sean Parnell and legislative leaders agreed on, and Parnell says he will make minimal vetoes from the bill.

Fiscal year 2013 begins July 1, so Parnell must give final approval to the budget by June 30.

Despite new natural gas discoveries in Alaska’s Cook Inlet utilities in the region will still experience shortages of gas supply by 2014 due to declining production in maturing fields, according to a new study of Cook Inlet gas reserves and regional demand released Monday.

The only practical alternative to deal with the shortfall is the import of liquefied natural gas, said Pete Stokes, commercial manager with Petrotechnical Resources of Alaska, an Anchorage-based consulting firm.

Morris News Service — AlaskaThe estimates were developed for the Alaska Health Care Commission by the University of Alaska’s Institute of Social and Economic Research.

Businesses and families are getting hit: At $11,926 per employee, Alaska has the highest average annual cost for employee health benefits in the nation, twice what employers in some other states pay. Between 2003 and 2010 the share of health benefits paid by employees increased from 17 percent to 22 percent for family coverage.

The state of Alaska has issued a key permit to allow a mothballed 50-megawatt coal power plant in Interior Alaska to restart, officials with Golden Valley Electric Association, the Interior Alaska electric cooperative, said Feb. 6.

Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation issued what is essentially a renewal of an air quality permit issued earlier for the Healy Clean Coal Project, which was built in the late 1990s to test experimental new air emissions technology, according to Brian Newton, Golden Valley’s president.