Trump officials in Alaska to boost long-planned Alaska LNG project and pipeline that will transit Mat-Su Borough

Alaska industry groups met with three Trump administration cabinet officials Sunday in a closed-door meeting ahead of a major Alaska energy conference that began Tuesday.

Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the state’s two senators, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Republicans, participated in the meeting Sunday, which focused on how to implement President Donald Trump’s plans Alaska including the long-planned Alaska LNG Project.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Lee Zeldin, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator listened to concerns raised by oil and gas producer and contractor groups as well as the state’s mining association and labor organizations.

Alaska LNG is important to Mat-Su residents because a considerable portion of the 42-inch pipeline that would carry natural gas from the North Slope would be built through the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. The pipeline would bring an industrial tax base to the borough, which now depends largely on residential and commercial property tax revenues.

It would also avoid depending on expensive imported liquefied natural gas as Cook Inlet gas as gas fields in the region decline.

In the meetings last Sunday, which where closed,

The proposed $42 billion Alaska LNG Project, a priority for President Trump, will be a part of the larger conference, which will be attended by government organizations from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

They are not part of the formal agenda for the conference but several private side meetings are planned during the conference that will include officials from the Asian nations. Frank Richards, CEO of the state’s Alaska Gasline Development Corp. The side meetings are also being organized to include briefings by Alaska pipeline and industry construction contractors with experience in the Arctic.

The conference itself has become an annual event organized by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and focuses mainly on new energy technologies including renewables, which are important for Alaska because of high costs of energy mainly in small rural communities.

Updates on development of small nuclear plants appropriate for mines in remote areas and outlying small communities are also part of the conference agenda.

Following Sunday’s private meeting, Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan said contractors and business groups raised three issues of primary concern they hope will be included in implementation of Trump’s new plan. Most important is simplification of complex federal permitting. “It shouldn’t take 20 years to permit a gold mine,” Sullivan said, though he didn’t identify the mine affected.

Oil and gas industry officials in the meeting pressed for a rollback in restrictive land policies in the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska put in place by the previous administration of President Joe Biden.

“This is an area the size of Indiana,” Interior Secretary Burgum said in comments following the closed meetings. ConocoPhillips’ Willow project, now under development in the reserve, has attracted intense national interest but actually take just a few acres for three drill sites, Burgum said.

The Alaska LNG Project has emerged as a major geopolitical security issue for U.S. allies in the Pacific, the Interior Secretary said, given rising tensions in the region. “There are 170 million people in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan with no energy resources of their own. We really need a capability to export natural gas to Asia off the U.S. west coast,” he said.

The long-planned Alaska LNG Project will be able to export 20 million tons a year of liquefied gas with shipping times of 8 days. LNG shipments from the U.S. gulf take 24 to 27 days and must transit the Panama Canal, “which is becoming a choke point,” in shipping, Burgum said.

Sullivan said the Trump administration will give a high priority to U.S. federal support including implementation of federal loan guarantees currently in law but not implemented under the Biden administration.

The senator also said he expects U.S. investors to provide the major capital needed to build the Alaska LNG Project. “What we really need now are customers,” to sign long-term purchasing contracts that will underpin the financing.

However, the Alaska LNG Project has been discussed and planned for years. “I know there are skeptics,” Sullivan said, who doubt that construction costs, particularly for a needed 807-mile, 42-inch pipeline, can be kept in affordable ranges.

Richards, AGDC’s CEO, said Alaska contractors have demonstrated a capability of bringing on large new Arctic projects on time and on budget. Glenfarne Group, the state’s new lead developer for Alaska LNG, recently signed a contract with Worley, an international construction company with extensive Arctic Alaska experience, to do final engineering and updated cost estimates for the pipeline portion of the project.

Those are expected to be done later this year and Glenfarne hopes to have investors in place for the pipeline by the end of the year, the company has said.

Meanwhile, in the private meetings Sunday mining groups raised concerns over federal permits for road access across federal lands to areas where exploration is underway, Sullivan said following the closed session.

The prime example is a permit for a 211-mile industrial road to reach the Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska. An access corridor is guaranteed under the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act but the Biden administration cancelled permit for the road, which would be built by the state.

On other issues, Sullißvan said the Senate will be closely scrutinizing the federal budget reconciliation act recently passed by the U.S. House, with attention paid to parts of the bill relate to renewable energy such as the “45-Q” tax credits.

Carbon capture and sequestration, which is of interest in Alaska, will also be a focus of attention, the senator said.