China’s top state oil major Sinopec to help develop Alaska LNG sector
09 Nov 2017
China's top state oil major Sinopec, one of the country's top banks and its sovereign wealth fund have agreed to help in developing Alaska's liquefied natural gas sector as part of president Donald Trump's visit, the US government said today.
The US government said in an email that Alaska Gasline Development Corp (AGDC), the State of Alaska, Sinopec, China Investment Corp and the Bank of China have signed an agreement to advance LNG in Alaska.
The agreement would involve investment of up to $43 billion, create up to 12,000 US jobs during construction, cut the trade deficit between the US and Asia by $10 billion a year, and give China clean energy, it added.
The mail offered no further details. AGDC is building a gas treatment plant, an 800-mile (1,287 km) pipeline to south central Alaska for in-state use, as also a liquefaction plant in Nikiski to produce up to 20 million tons of LNG per year for export.
''This is an agreement that will provide Alaska with an economic boom comparable to the development of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in the 1970s,'' said Walker, Washington Examiner reported.
''Today's agreement brings the potential customer, lender, equity investor, and developer together with a common objective of crafting mutually beneficial agreements leading to increased LNG trade between Alaska and China,'' said Keith Meyer, president the Alaska development corporation.
According to Sinopec, its goal is to help in the creation of ''stable'' route for purchasing LNG from Alaska.
The liquefied natural gas project named Alaska LNG will include three trains, or terminals, having annual production capacity of 20 million tons of liquefied product for shipment abroad to Asia.
The facility will also include an 800-mile-long pipeline, a gas treatment plant on the North Slope of Alaska where much of its energy production takes place.
"Under the agreement, the parties have agreed to work cooperatively on LNG marketing, financing, investment model and China content in Alaska LNG, and get a periodic result by 2018," according to a joint statement.
''As the most internationalised bank in China, Bank of China is willing to facilitate the China-US energy cooperation and provide financial solutions for this transaction by taking advantage of its vast experiences and expertise in international mega-project financing,'' a statement by the Bank of China said.
