Ben Stevens takes another hot seat

As if balancing Alaska’s strained finances wasn’t enough, Alaska Senate majority leader Ben Stevens has joined the board of Semco Energy Inc., parent of Enstar in Alaska and a similar gas distribution business in Michigan. He’s been on an Enstar advisory panel since 2001.Semco has been skating dangerously close to bankruptcy after buying several construction companies that did underground utility work. But those companies didn’t win enough contracts to be profitable and Semco later sold the construction businesses, suffering a loss of roughly $50 million.

It had to eliminate its dividend and may have to find additional equity to stay afloat, further diluting the interests of current stockholders who are already saddled with half a billion in debt and a lawsuit over sale of part of Enstar’s pipeline network. Management has been changed since most of the disasters. Stevens is replacing John Hinton, the former company chairman who left the board in October.