US President Donald Trump’s energy security council plans to host a summit in Alaska in early June, when it hopes Japan and South Korea would announce commitments to the Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
Trump has touted the US$44 billion Alaska LNG project, which would deliver gas from the state’s North Slope fields via a 1,300km pipeline for domestic use and send it to customers in Asia as LNG, bypassing the Panama Canal.
While the project has been talked about for years, progress has been limited by cost and the amount of work needed.
Photo: Reuters
Trump, who has pushed allies to buy US energy while simultaneously threatening trade tariffs, has asked Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to support the Alaska plan.
Last month, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) signed a non-binding agreement with the state-run Alaska Gasline Development Corp, to buy LNG and invest in the project, a move President William Lai (賴清德) said would ensure the nation’s energy security.
The summit being planned by the National Energy Dominance Council, which wants to maximize production of oil and gas, would take place on June 2. It was first reported by the New York Times.
The White House and the US Department of the Interior did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Separately, officials from Thailand, which could also be a consumer of the LNG from Alaska, and South Korea are expected to visit the state to talk about the project sometime in the next two weeks, said a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
It would be the first visit to Alaska by Thai officials to talk about the project in Trump’s second administration.
South Korean Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Ahn Duk-geun on Thursday said that he was not aware of a plan to announce its commitment, and that “there are still a lot of things that need to be done” through due diligence of the Alaska LNG project “to understand the local situation more accurately.”
The country is dispatching an inspection team, and results of the due diligence would need to be seen to discuss how it should proceed, Ahn said.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
RSS