Glenfarne holds 'reaffirmation' ceremony with one potential LNG buyer

“I have to tell you it’s the real deal. I will be shocked, shocked, not surprised, shocked if in December or January there’s anything other than we’re going to FID (final investment decision on the gas pipeline),” Gov. Mike Dunleavy told the Resource Development Council last October 16.

He must be shocked, shocked, not surprised, shocked.

Glenfarne has yet to make a final investment decision on the giant LNG project.

Brendan Duval, the CEO of Glenfarne, just appeared at the latest industry event in Japan at which he took part in what he called a “reaffirmation” ceremony with PTT, a company from Thailand that has had a non-binding agreement to buy gas from Alaska since last year.

That it was a reaffirmation ceremony and not a binding contract or a new non-binding agreement is hardly what Glenfarne needed from the Indo-Pacific Energy Security Ministerial and Business Forum.

The weekend forum in Tokyo was proposed and promoted by Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, which wanted to have signed deals.

Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said “we leave here with tens of billions of dollars of new deals.”

Duval said the Trump cabinet members, especially Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are “nearly our lead sales team, spreading the great word of this project.”

Duval continues to put a positive spin on the Alaska LNG situation.

“The pipeline portion of the project will be built over construction seasons at the end of this year. So two construction seasons broadly in 2027 and two construction seasons in 2028 because the construction has to align with the different freeze-thaw cycles there in Alaska. The intention is to have last weld, the mechanical completion of the pipeline in 2028 and then gas will be delivered under that pipeline in 2029,” Duval said.

“That initial portion of the project is designed to de-risk the then construction of the LNG facility,” he said.

The focus now is trying to sell under binding contracts, 16 million tons a year of LNG.

Duval said the company has announced “13 million tons of sales” and needs to sell 3 million more tons.

But those sales are not binding, which Duval did not mention. A tentative agreement to buy gas is not the same as a guaranteed contract that lasts for 20 years.

“So to go to a sales volume that is sufficient for FID we have 3 million tons left to sell. We actually have a very detailed negotiation going on with a very large global player at the moment. Actually there’s two of them,” he said.

“So I suspect that last 3 million tons will move very quickly. The importance of this project is really being highlighted by the events in the Middle East. LNG coming down from the Kenai Peninsula into north Asia—for northern Japan it’s roughly a seven to eight-day sail. Five of those days are within U.S. territory coming down through the Aleutian Islands. And really it’s then a short distance down into Taiwan and down to Thailand,” he said.

“And it is the only U.S. LNG available to north Asia that does not have to travel through contested waters. So it is really an excellent choice for energy security,” he said.

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