Trump Says He Discussed LNG Exports With Japan’s Ishiba

Bloomberg News

President Donald Trump said that the US and Japan are discussing a pipeline project in Alaska after meeting with the country’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba.

“We’re talking about a joint venture of some type between Japan and US, having to do with Alaska oil and gas,” Trump said Friday at a joint press conference alongside Ishiba at the White House.

The president said Japan would also begin importing new shipments of American liquefied natural gas “in record numbers” and accused his predecessor, former US President Joe Biden, of failing to help the US ally address its energy needs.

“We also confirmed we will cooperate to strengthen energy security between the two countries, including increasing exports of United States liquefied natural gas to Japan in a mutually beneficial manner,” Trump said. “Japan wanted to buy LNG and Biden wouldn’t sell it. I’m trying to figure that one out. Maybe it was the environment,” he added.

Trump did not specify which project he was referring to, but before his meeting with Ishiba, the president was urged to encourage investment in a $44 billion natural gas export project long planned in the state. The Alaska Gasline Development Corp. project has been prioritized by Republicans, including the president, who promised just after the election he would ensure it “gets built to provide affordable energy to Alaska and allies all over the world.”

The president also used a Jan. 20 executive order to make clear it’s now US policy to “prioritize the development of Alaska’s liquefied natural gas potential, including the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to other regions of the United States and allied nations within the Pacific Region.”

Ishiba through a translator confirmed the ongoing discussions.

“We will cooperate to strengthen energy security between the two countries including increasing exports of United States liquefied natural gas to Japan in a mutually beneficial manner,” he said. And he added that Japan is interested in importing bioethanol, ammonia and other resources “at a reasonable price from the United States.”

The venture — proposed in various forms for decades — would open new markets for massive gas reserves now stranded on Alaska’s North Slope. But unlike LNG export facilities on the US Gulf Coast, this one would be massive in scale, requiring the construction of an 800-mile pipeline across the state, and encompassing a separate carbon capture facility as well as import and export capability. In the short term, the project would import natural gas to supply Alaska, helping offset declining production in the state’s Cook Inlet.

Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, has urged US allies in Asia — specifically Japan, Korea and Taiwan — to buy LNG from the project, shunning supplies from Qatar he’s  as “unreliable.”

It’s a “huge mistake” for them to be “doubling down on Qatari gas,” Sullivan said at a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies event. While those supplies could be cut off amid geopolitical tensions, he argued, the Alaska LNG project offers assurance of reliable supply “backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America.”

US LNG purchase agreements and investments are the matter of private companies, and typically governments have little oversight into these negotiations. It isn’t clear if any Japanese companies are actually close to purchasing more LNG from the US.

Still, Trump’s tariffs threats have prompted policymakers from South Korea to the European Union to consider procuring more energy from the US, which is both biggest producer of crude and the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.

Japan is the world’s second-largest LNG buyer, and several companies had already been considering investment in US export facilities ahead of Trump’s election as part of a broader move to boost energy security.

In Japan, the government has urged buyers to seek more long-term LNG pacts on fears that electrification and the AI boom will up power demand. Roughly 10% of Japan’s LNG supplies came from the US last year, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.