{"id":3594,"date":"2016-09-12T08:01:17","date_gmt":"2016-09-12T15:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/walker-headed-back-to-japan\/"},"modified":"2016-09-12T08:01:17","modified_gmt":"2016-09-12T15:01:17","slug":"walker-headed-back-to-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/walker-headed-back-to-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Walker headed back to Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014<\/strong> Gov. Bill Walker has plans for one overseas trip, but not two.<\/p>\n

The governor is headed to the LNG Producer-Consumer Conference in Tokyo later this year. Originally scheduled for Nov. 30, the single-day meeting is now planned for Nov. 24, Thanksgiving Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanksgiving will be with chopsticks this year, which is fine. I\u2019m happy with that,\u201d Walker said in an interview with the Alaska Journal of Commerce.<\/p>\n

Walker spoke at the annual conference last year to promote the state\u2019s natural gas resources and the Alaska LNG Project; he was the first sitting governor to speak at the event. U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan represented Alaska at the first LNG Producer-Consumer Conference in 2012 when he was the state\u2019s Department of Natural Resources commissioner.<\/p>\n

Rumors about a trip to Qatar are unfounded, however, according to the governor.<\/p>\n

Qatari Ambassador to the U.S. Mohammed Jaham Al Kuwari invited Walker to visit the Middle Eastern nation when he came to Alaska in August, but that\u2019s as far as it went. Walker said he does not have a trip scheduled.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s a benefit to Alaska, then I\u2019ll do it. If there\u2019s not, then I won\u2019t,\u201d he said simply.<\/p>\n

At the LNG conference in Tokyo put on by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Asia Pacific Energy Research Centre, the governor will have a room reserved to meet with potential customers of the Alaska LNG Project.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a fairly typical thing to do to get your project up on the marquee a little bit,\u201d Walker said.<\/p>\n

He described the conference, as far as the state is concerned, as \u201call major, major buyers of LNG kind of wanting to know what\u2019s happening in Alaska, what\u2019s different than last time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asian utilities are seen as the primary market for Alaska\u2019s gas, and a lot has changed on AK LNG since Walker was in Japan at the conference last September.<\/p>\n

The State of Alaska, through the Alaska Gasline Development Corp., is taking the lead on the $45 billion-plus North Slope gas export plan to see if alternative financing options can make the massive endeavor more competitive in the current buyers LNG market than the previous equity model with the state, BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil all chipping in.<\/p>\n

The state-led project is still a concept at this point, but a new, formal alignment is expected in October, according to state project leaders.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Elwood Brehmer is a reporter for the Alaska Journal of Commerce. He can be reached at elwood.brehmer@alaskajournal.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 Gov. Bill Walker has plans for one overseas trip, but not two. The governor is headed to the LNG Producer-Consumer Conference in Tokyo later this year. Originally scheduled for Nov. 30, the single-day meeting is now planned for Nov. 24, Thanksgiving Day. \u201cThanksgiving will be with chopsticks this year, which is fine. I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3594"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}