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https://scmp.com/news/china/money-wealth/article/3020370/alaska-scraps-plan-partner-china-major-natural-gas-project Money & Wealth
Alaska scraps plan to partner with China on major natural gas project over fears of ‘risks to the state’
- The plan was signed in 2017 in front of presidents Trump and Xi, and overseen by former Alaska governor Bill Walker
- But new Governor Mike Dunleavy is concerned about ‘risks’ associated with working with three Chinese companies
Alaska Governor Bill Walker shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping in April 2017. A plan with three Chinese companies to extract and sell Alaska’s natural gas has been cancelled by Walker’s successor. Photo: AP
A plan for Alaska and partners in China to advance a major liquefied natural gas project has been scrapped due to safety concerns from the state’s new administration.
The plan, which was formed under independent ex-governor Bill Walker, has been dropped by his successor, Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy, according to the Alaska Journal of Commerce.
Joe Dubler, interim president of the Alaska Gasline Development, said the corporation, which has been working on the state’s behalf, did not renew a non-binding agreement it had with three Chinese firms to buy up to 75 per cent of the project’s liquefied natural gas in exchange for an equal share of the needed financing.
Dubler, who made the remarks in recent testimony before a state legislative committee, said the project was shut down because the Dunleavy administration isn’t comfortable with the risks that the state would have to take on to complete the project.
It isn’t clear what risks the administration believed the project presented.
The agreement was signed with fanfare in 2017, in front of both US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Dubler said work done by the corporation since taking over the project in late 2016 proved there is international interest in an Alaska gas project.
But he said more work is needed before major liquefied natural gas purchase and investment agreements can be finalised.
Nonetheless, he argued the state is making unprecedented progress. “I think we’re closer now than we’ve ever been” to making a gas line project happen, he said. Similar arguments have been made during prior iterations of the project.
The corporation is downsizing, and its remaining employees will focus on completing an environmental review process before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
A favourable decision at the end of that process could make the project more attractive to potential partners, he said.
Dunleavy has said he wants the state to back away from leading the project and instead focus on bringing in partners, such as large oil companies, to take it over.
Representative Chris Tuck, an Anchorage Democrat, said this seems to be taking the project back to early 2016 when BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil were partners with the state but determined that global energy markets made the economics of the project difficult.
Company representatives at that time said they would either shelve or slow down the project until market conditions improved or let the state examine ways to make it more economic. The state, under Walker, chose the latter.