BY JOHN GEDDIE, TIM KELLY AND DAVID BRUNNSTROM
TOKYO/WASHINGTON- When President Donald Trump sat down to lunch with his Japanese counterpart this month, talk turned quickly to how Tokyo could help realize a decades-old proposal to unlock gas in Alaska and ship it to US allies in Asia.
Trump and his energy tsar Doug Burgum framed the venture as a way for Japan to replace Middle East energy shipments and address its trade imbalance with the US according to two officials briefed on the closed-door talks.
Japanese premier Shigeru Ishiba – eager to ensure a positive first meeting and stave off damaging US tariffs – struck an optimistic note about the Alaska LNG project despite Tokyo’s doubts about its viability.
Ishiba told Trump and Burgum that he hoped Japan could participate in the $44 billion project, said the officials, granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks.
Trump repeatedly mentioned the project in his public remarks after the lunch. Ishiba did not, and there was no reference to it in the official readout of the talks.
Burgum, who serves as both US Interior Secretary and co-chair of a White House-appointed National Energy Dominance Council, touted potential US LNG exports to Asia as a key geopolitical and economic strategy in a speech to US governors on Friday.
“When we sell LNG to our friends and allies – from places like Alaska into Japan and South Korea and the Philippines – it not only helps stabilize the world, it also reduces our trade deficits,” he said.
Reuters interviews with more than a dozen people, including current and former US and Asian officials, show how the Trump administration is moving to recast economic relations with East Asia by binding regional allies to Washington through increased investment in American fossil fuels, particularly LNG.
The US sales pitch seeks to tap into concerns in Asian capitals about tariffs and the security of sea lanes that carry their energy imports, Reuters found. Details of the behind-the-scenes exchanges and specifics of the US approach have not been previously reported.
While the Alaska LNG proposal faces cost and logistical hurdles, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and others are buying into the idea of increasing US gas imports more broadly, which could bolster the US economy and blunt the influence of China and Russia. — Reuters
