Today’s Key Takeaways: Taiwan interested in Alaska LNG. Trump’s Arctic strategy focusing on Alaska production? Judge dismisses Enstar dispute with Hilcorp. U.S Gold mining confirms high-grade gold find.
NEWS OF THE DAY:
Taiwan Joins Japan as Alaska LNG Hopeful
Irina Slav, Oilprice.com, February 10, 2025
Taiwan has followed in Japan’s footsteps, expressing interest in buying more liquefied natural gas from the U.S. and more specifically from a project in Alaska, Reuters has reported, citing the country’s economy ministry.
The statement reflects concern about the impact of tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose on all countries that run a trade surplus with the U.S. Taiwan is one of them, with the surplus surging last year when Taiwanese exports to the U.S. jumped by 83% driven by electronics, to hit an all-time high of $111.4 billion.
The report follows news that Japan would be very much interested in buying Alaskan liquefied natural gas as a way of avoiding tariffs, including investing in a $44-billion project led by Alaska Gasline Development Corporation.
The project is designed to deliver North Slope natural gas to Alaskans and export LNG to U.S. allies across the Pacific. The project was authorized by President Trump’s administration in 2020, was reauthorized by President Biden’s administration in 2022, and is the only federally permitted LNG export facility on the U.S. West Coast, offering direct, canal-free shipping via uncontested waters to Asian markets, the Alaska state firm says.
Japan’s JERA also said this month it was ready to boost imports of U.S. gas in order to diversify its portfolio, and Mitsui, the trading major, signaled it was open to participating in the Alaskan LNG project.
Taiwan’s state energy company CPC is “indeed quite interested in Alaska’s natural gas and will continue to assess the feasibility and is also willing to make additional purchases,” the economy ministry statement said.
The island’s state news agency reported over the weekend that CPC was in talks with an Alaskan company that the report did not name “in the hope of reducing the trade surplus with the U.S..”
OIL & GAS:
Trump rhetoric could foreshadow wider US strategy on Arctic resources: experts
- Pressure on Canada and Greenland
- Focus on Alaskan production
- ‘Policy groundwork has already been laid’
US President Donald Trump’s early-term rhetoric about Greenland and Canada and his focus on increasing Alaskan energy production could presage a larger, long-term US strategy to gain leverage over undeveloped oil and gas resources in the Arctic Circle, experts told S&P Global Commodity Insights.
Since he was elected in November, Trump has threatened Canada with sweeping 25% tariffs (before delaying those tariffs for a month) and mused about making it the 51st state, publicly discussed a potential US acquisition of Greenland, an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark, and issued a specific executive order directing agencies to do “unleash” Alaska’s “energy potential” by rewriting restrictions on development and opening up federal lands to leases.
While those policies have been presented as discrete, they could also point to a more cohesive US strategy of securing and eventually developing oil and gas resources in the Arctic.
“I think there is a US strategic interest and plan to continue to defend and increasingly exert positive control over resource deposits and shipping lands in the region,” Scott Modell, CEO of Rapidan Energy Group, said. “We have not seen evidence of a coordinated strategy yet out of the Trump White House — just histrionics — but the analytical and policy groundwork has already been laid.”
Arctic potential
The second Trump administration was quick to promise new oil and gas projects in Alaska, vowing to expedite permitting and leasing and roll back restrictions on federal lands and waters imposed by previous US President Joe Biden. Industry interest in technically complex and politically fraught development in the state was limited even in the first Trump administration, but one project approved during the first Trump administration — ConocoPhillips’s Willow Project, on the North Slope of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an area estimated to contain 896 million barrels of oil by a 2008 US Geological Service survey — was allowed to move forward under Biden.
“For more than 50 years, ConocoPhillips has been safely and reliably developing Alaska’s oil resources,” ConocoPhillips director of external affairs Rebecca Boys said in an email. “We appreciate the Trump administration’s decision to harness America’s energy potential by recognizing the strategic importance of resource development in Alaska. … ConocoPhillips looks forward to continuing to responsibly explore and develop the NPR-A in the years ahead.”
The Willow Project has become an example of wider US industry interest in long-term Alaskan development, particularly as other large US oilfields like the Bakken and Permian peak in the coming decades, American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers said.
“My answer to that would be: Look at Willow,” Sommers said. “As some of these other basins become more mature, we know that there are a lot of resources in Alaska, and we expect there will be a lot of interest — if there’s durable energy policy.”
A potential product of such policy could be the Alaska LNG Project. Trump’s Alaska executive order claimed permitting for the $44 billion project to extract natural gas on the North Slope and pipe it to the Kenai Peninsula would be expedited under his administration.
“Having an LNG export facility in Alaska, on the West Coast, would be extremely strategic,” Dr. Ellen Wald, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said.
That strategic interest could, in theory, extend to projects beyond current US territory. According to a 2019 analysis by Nordregio based largely on the 2008 USGS survey, hundreds of miles of Canada and Greenland’s coasts are more than 50% likely to have greater than 50 million barrels of oil or LNG equivalent, in addition to proven areas in the North Slope, Beaufort Sea, and Canadian Arctic Archipelago — areas that climate change and technological advances have made more accessible.
“Trump and his team are definitely interested in developing more energy, but there is a tension between the desire to do so at home — including Alaska — and efforts abroad,” Rachel Ziemba, senior advisor at political risk consultancy Horizon Engage, said. “It’s definitely no longer the time of friendshoring.”
Hilcorp wins case in dispute with Enstar over gas supply and concerns of power outages
Alex DeMarban, Anchorage Daily News, February 7, 2025
A state judge ruled in favor of Hilcorp Alaska in a dispute with Southcentral Alaska’s natural gas company over concerns that a cold snap could lead to imminent shortages of natural gas needed to heat homes and businesses.
Enstar Natural Gas, which provides gas to more than 150,000 customers, filed the case last month. Enstar argued that Hilcorp failed to deliver gas under contract to be stored for periods of high demand. Hilcorp Alaska is the top gas producer in the region and Enstar, its largest customer.
Anchorage Superior Court Judge Herman Walker Jr. ruled on Thursday that he was dismissing the case, a move sought by Hilcorp, which sought to resolve the matter outside the courts through mediation or arbitration.
MINING:
U.S. GoldMining confirms higher-grade zone
Shane Lasley, North of 60 Mining News, February 7, 2025\
Drill cuts116 meters averaging 0.13% copper, 0.76 g/t gold, and 1.75 g/t at the Whistler deposit.
U.S. GoldMining Inc. Feb. 3 said the latest round of assays from the 2024 drilling at Whistler continues to show the potential to upgrade and expand the namesake deposit on the company’s copper-gold-silver deposit in the West Susitna Mineral district about 100 miles northwest of Anchorage, Alaska.
Based on drilling completed through 2023, the Whistler, Raintree West, and Island Mountain deposits host 294.5 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.42 g/t (3.93 million oz) gold, 2.01 g/t (19 million oz) silver, and 0.16% (1.02 billion lb) copper; plus198.2 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.52 g/t (3.31 million oz) gold, 1.81 g/t (11.4 million oz) silver; and 0.07% (317 million lb) copper.
Whistler Deposit, which is by far the largest and most advanced on the 53,700-acre property, hosts 282.2 million tons of the overall indicated resource averaging 0.41 g/t (3.72 million oz) gold, 1.89 g/t (17.2 million oz) silver, and 0.16% (999 million lb) copper; plus18.2 million metric tons of the inferred resource averaging 0.4 g/t (233,000 oz) gold, 1.75 g/t (1 million oz) silver; and 0.13% (54 million lb) copper.
U.S. GoldMining’s 2024 drilling focused on building resources within the Whistler Orbit, a roughly 5-mile-diameter (7.6 kilometers) area surrounding Whistler and Raintree and several earlier staged porphyry copper-gold targets.
The company views Island Mountain as a compelling secondary deposit that would add value after mining is established within Whistler Orbit.