JAPAN

At long last we're starting to read about Japan's interest in new Alaska LNG.

From the Alaska Dispatch we learn than teams from Alaska are visiting Japan (LINK) and from Nikkei we learn that Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will sign a memorandum or understanding with the Alaska project (LINK).

Why is this important? - You only build bankable projects and the cost of world scale LNG plants require that you must sell your product before you can obtain financing.  For example look at the customer side of a current project like Cheniere (LINK).  The Alaska LNG project must execute sales agreements before the project moves into the detail engineering and construction phase.