Governor Bill Walker returned Saturday from a week of meetings in Japan with possible Alaska LNG buyers.
Gov. Walker: “We met with about 25 different companies, energy companies, buyers of LNG, from both Japan and Korea were at the conference I spoke at. It was pretty amazing, the high level of interest and engagement for the natural gas that I had on the north slope in the ground, it was very encouraging to receive the type of welcome and engagement that we received.”
Now the governor will likely call a special legislative session to address the liquefied natural gas pipeline project.
Walker met with members of the legislature Monday to mull over the details of the agenda and timing of the session. Those particulars are set to come out later this week.
So far in Nikiski, the Alaska LNG Project has acquired around 600 of the 800 acres needed for the massive LNG plant.
The spending on the preliminary engineering has reached $243 million of it’s total $500 million pre – FEED budget as of July.
Despite the work already underway, the economics of the project are still in question.
One question the legislature needs answered for the 2016 budget, will TransCanada still be involved and be putting its share of the money forward?
If the state buys TransCanada out like the governor has proposed, it will cost Alaska around $110 million.
