Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has just concluded a trade mission to Japan where he met executives of leading energy companies and utilities as well as government ministries about the Japanese companies procuring long-term Alaskan LNG supplies.
The meetings came at a time when Japan is looking in the medium term and long-term for more oil and gas amid sanctions against Russia for the Ukraine conflict.
“Alaska and Japan have a trade partnership going back over fifty years to the first LNG export from Nikiski to Japan,” said Governor Dunleavy at the end of the trip.
“The natural gas of the Cook Inlet literally turned the lights on in cities across Japan and powered the economic engine that lifted that nation’s post-war society into a critically powerful western ally,” explained the Governor.
“There appears to be, due to the shift across the world away from older fuel sources, and the simultaneous need for supplies that are not risked due to political instability, a role that Alaska natural gas could play,” stated Dunleavy.
Dunleavy was accompanied by members of the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. (AGDC), the state company running the LNG project, and they met major Japanese global players in LNG.
It was the Governor’s second foreign trip during his administration; and the first was also to Japan in 2019, marking the 50th anniversary of the first LNG shipment from the first US LNG export plant at Nikiski to Tokyo.
Dunleavy and the Alaska delegation held meeting with representatives of the Japan Energy Resource Agency, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp.
They additionally met with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation along with Tokyo Gas and TOYO Engineering, trading house Mitsubishi Corp., engineers Chiyoda Corp., well as oil and gas major INPEX and shipping company Mitsui Osk Lines.
