In advance of trips to Asian countries to market Alaska's natural gas, Gov. Bill Walker and other state officials met with Japanese energy officials Friday who offered to help line up meetings with potential gas buyers.
The three-hour meeting in Juneau came at the request of Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry and the Japan Oil, Gas, and Metals National Corp., Walker said. The groups are involved in ensuring that Japan, the world's largest importer of liquefied natural gas, has stable energy supplies.
The meetings "underscored not only Japanese interest in Alaska natural gas, but also the general optimism that exists across the Pacific for our state to enter the international market," Walker said in a statement released on Tuesday.
In a phone interview Tuesday, Walker said the Japanese officials came to Alaska as part of their effort to keep abreast of energy prospects around the world.
He called the meeting a "nice precursor" to a trip he is planning to Japan in November because it will ease discussions with Japanese companies potentially interested in the state's natural gas. Walker has said he will speak Nov. 24 in Tokyo at the fifth annual LNG Producer-Consumer Conference.
"These are good contacts to have," he said. "They are major players in Japan."
In September, before the trip to Japan, an eight-person team including Walker, First Lady Donna Walker and other state officials plan to visit Singapore and South Korea for 10 days. Walker is expected to speak Sept. 21 at an LNG conference in Singapore and plans to meet with potential LNG buyers there and in South Korea at the invitation of the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Other state officials who attended the meeting in Juneau were Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott and Keith Meyer, president of the Alaska Gasline Development Corp., the state owned entity that plans to take over the $55 billion Alaska LNG project from ExxonMobil by the end of this year.
Hit heavily by the prolonged oil price slump, ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips have expressed concerns about the competitiveness of the project and appear likely to play smaller roles once the state takes over. Walker hopes the state can lower project costs and may seek a federal tax break.
At the meeting, the Japanese groups and state officials discussed the coming changes in the LNG project and other resource opportunities in Alaska, Walker said.
For decades, the state and various companies have proposed creating a gas line to market the huge amounts of natural gas on the North Slope to utilities in other countries or in the Lower 48.
The enormity and cost of the project, and the reluctance by oil producers to sell the gas, help explain why the project has never been completed. The natural gas has been reinjected underground to maintain pressure in reservoirs, a process that helps squeeze the more valuable oil to the surface.
State officials have met before with the Japanese energy agencies. In 2014 under Gov. Sean Parnell, METI and the Alaska Department of Natural Resources signed a memorandum of understanding to share information about efforts to develop natural gas.