Photos: As energy industries dwindle, Alaska's political scene shifts

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From left: Don Foster, Ken Nyquist, and Ken Lamera eat breakfast at the Country Cafe in North Pole, Alaska, Sept. 25, 2014. Economic anxiety and a fall in energy production in Alaska has roiled an already sharp-edged political season here, which is focused on one of the most competitive Senate races in the country.

A gleaming $23 million complex of office buildings, dormitories and workshops has risen from the boreal forest just outside of Fairbanks over the last decade, aimed at training workers for a natural gas pipeline that was supposed to snake from the Arctic to serve energy markets around the world and make Alaska rich all over again.

But the pipeline was never built, the victim of a worldwide glut of natural gas that has reduced demand for Alaska's supply. On a recent weekday afternoon, the meeting rooms and dorms were empty, with just one welding class breaking the silence on the Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center Trust's sprawling 63-acre campus.