Pipeline dreams in Alaska

A mothballed LNG plant in Nikiski, Alaska. Alaska LNG has been a dream of legislators since the 1980s. It has made little progress because of its formidable costs. — Ash Adams/The New York Times

IN Nikiski, a small community in southern Alaska, recent talk has centred on US President Donald Trump’s promotion of a massive energy scheme: the Alaska LNG project.

Touted as the largest energy investment in US history, the US$44bil plan proposes shipping liquefied natural gas (LNG) from northern Alaska’s gas fields to customers in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. Nikiski would serve as the project’s export hub.

For decades, Alaska has dreamed of such a project, but progress has remained elusive.

Now, it stands as a centrepiece of the Trump administration’s fossil fuel agenda.

For Nikiski and neighbouring communities, Alaska LNG represents an economic lifeline.

Perched on the Kenai Peninsula, south of Anchorage, Nikiski has relied on oil and gas for over half a century. Yet in recent decades, those reserves have dwindled.

Forests and lakes give way here to a battered coastline dotted with ageing industrial facilities – many long since shut. Empty storefronts line Nikiski’s main road.

“It’s no secret that the economic status of Alaska is not in good shape,” said Peter Ribbens, Nikiski’s representative on the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly.

Like many locals, Ribbens came to Alaska for energy sector work, arriving in 1997 to join a refinery.

“Having a chunk of petroleum hydrocarbons flowing to Japan would plug a whole lot of problems, not only in Nikiski,” he said, sitting in his timber-frame home by a quiet lake on Nikiski’s outskirts.

Alaska LNG has been a dream since the 1980s.

But the sheer scale of the infrastructure required – a 1,290km pipeline over frozen ground linking the gas fields in Alaska’s north to Nikiski, where the gas would be chilled to -162°C and loaded onto ships – has made it a fantasy too expensive to realise.

As years dragged on without progress, hope in Nikiski withered.

But Trump has championed the project since his first days in office. His trade negotiators have raised it with Asian leaders, seeking the long-term gas purchase agreements necessary to make the plan viable.

Glenfarne, a New York-based energy company now leading the project, said in June that more than 50 companies had expressed interest in Alaska LNG. More recently, Thailand’s state-owned PTT signed a deal to procure gas from the project for 20 years.

In Nikiski, this sudden political focus has sparked excitement. Yet Ribbens remains sceptical.

“I have been in Alaska since 1983,” he said. “My view on Alaska LNG is show me the money.”

The Kenai Peninsula’s economy was built on oil and gas.

Oil was first discovered nearby in 1957; vast natural gas reserves followed in 1959.

These finds lured a fertiliser plant and an oil refinery to Nikiski. In 1969, a facility between the two began chilling gas for export to Japan.

By the 1980s, Nikiski’s economy was thriving.

Peter Micciche, now mayor of the Kenai Peninsula Borough, began his career in 1985 as a roustabout at the LNG plant and later became its superintendent.

He remembers when Nikiski finally got its first streetlights, stop signs and even a McDonald’s.

“You had decades of very strong economic activity when these plants were all operating,” Micciche said. “Japan relied on us. Oil and gas created an economy here that would have never existed otherwise.”

But by the turn of the century, Nikiski’s natural gas was running low.

The fertiliser plant shut in 2007. The oil refinery scaled back. LNG shipments to Japan ended in 2011, and the export facility was mothballed in 2017.

Today, Nikiski’s once-bustling industrial shore sits largely silent.

Locals hope a new LNG pipeline could bring back industry.

“It’s totally rational that people want it to happen,” Ribbens said. “And if it’s something you want, you start looking for reasons it’s going to.”

Just 2.5km down the coast from the original LNG plant, a grassy plot has been set aside for the new terminal. The project’s operators have already bought more than a dozen homes nearby in anticipation.

With the world increasingly turning to cleaner energy and other LNG projects advancing elsewhere, Alaska officials view Trump’s backing as a rare opportunity to realise this long-held ambition.

According to Glenfarne executive vice-president Adam Prestidge, construction is set to begin this year on a pipeline linking the northern gas fields to Anchorage, northeast of Nikiski.

That portion of the project is commercially viable on its own, he said.

If Glenfarne can secure sufficient foreign buyers, it will extend the pipeline the remaining 48km to Nikiski, where it also plans to build the LNG export terminal.

The Nikiski facility alone would account for about half the project’s total US$44bil price tag.

For Micciche, proceeding with a reduced version of the project – one that serves only local demand – is far from ideal. Without export buyers, the pipeline would transport just a fraction of its intended capacity.

In his office, beneath a mounted bear gifted by a local restaurant, Micciche still keeps a red lacquered vase from the president of a former Japanese LNG buyer – a relic from more optimistic days.

Alaska, he insists, has an opportunity to reclaim its place as a global energy supplier.

“The question now is whether we can bring the economics together with adequate investment,” Micciche said. “I don’t think we have another option.” — ©2025 The New York Times Company

This article originally appeared in The New York Times