ConocoPhillips Backs Alaska LNG Phase One FID

Glenfarne Alaska LNG signed a 30-year gas sales precedent agreement with ConocoPhillips Alaska on Monday, completing the slate of North Slope producer commitments needed to push the long-stalled Alaska LNG project toward a Phase One final investment decision. The deal commits ConocoPhillips Alaska natural gas volumes for the project's 1,189-kilometre, 42-inch mainline pipeline running from Prudhoe Bay to Nikiski on the Kenai Peninsula.

ConocoPhillips Alaska, a wholly-owned subsidiary that traces its North Slope footprint back to Phillips Petroleum's 1969 entry and the 2006 Burlington Resources acquisition, now joins ExxonMobil Alaska (operator of the Point Thomson gas-condensate field), Hilcorp Alaska (which bought BP's North Slope assets in 2020), and Great Bear Pantheon (UK-listed Pantheon Resources's subsidiary) as committed suppliers. The four producers between them control the bulk of the roughly 35 trillion cubic feet of stranded gas reserves under the North Slope, gas that has been awaiting commercialisation since the 1970s.

Phase One Pipeline Sized for 3.3 Bcf/d Through-Put

Phase One is the 1,189 km pipeline alone, sized for up to 3.3 billion cubic feet per day of throughput according to Glenfarne specifications, with mechanical completion targeted for 2028 and first deliveries to Alaska end users in 2029. The pipeline crosses three mountain ranges and 800-plus stream crossings. At its design capacity it can theoretically move roughly 1.2 Tcf per year, enough to drain North Slope reserves over about three decades at peak rate, although in-state demand and Phase Two LNG offtake will set actual flows.

For ConocoPhillips, the precedent agreement converts a fraction of its North Slope reserves from book value to contracted revenue. The producer is the largest single oil leaseholder on the Alaska North Slope, with operated production from Prudhoe Bay, Kuparuk, the Western North Slope, and the newer Willow and Nuna projects. Gas from these fields has historically been reinjected to maintain reservoir pressure or vented, with very limited monetisation.

TotalEnergies Offtake Anchors Phase Two LNG Plans

Phase Two of the project adds the Nikiski liquefaction terminal, sized for 20 million tonnes per annum, equivalent to roughly 2.7 Bcf/d of export. TotalEnergies signed a non-binding offtake agreement with Glenfarne earlier this year covering Phase Two volumes, and Worley holds provisional engineering, procurement and construction management contracts. The historical cost estimate for the full two-phase project has ranged between $45 billion and $65 billion, depending on which iteration of the BP-ExxonMobil-ConocoPhillips consortium era is used as the baseline.

Glenfarne, a New York-based private infrastructure developer led by Brendan Duval, acquired the Alaska LNG project from the state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corporation in 2024. With Monday's ConocoPhillips agreement, the developer told media it now has sufficient committed gas volumes to support a Phase One FID. A statement from Glenfarne said the producer commitments "exceed Alaska's energy needs," signalling room for Phase Two export volumes once the LNG terminal is sanctioned.

How Monday's Deal Changes the FID Math

The Alaska LNG project has been technically permitted since 2020 when the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued its certificate, but FID had been repeatedly pushed out as the original sponsors retreated. The producer commitment slate, now signed across all four North Slope operators, removes the single largest commercial overhang. Two-thirds of US lower-48 LNG export project FIDs in 2024 and 2025 cleared on the back of long-dated 20-year or 25-year supply agreements with gas suppliers, and Alaska's 30-year structure with ConocoPhillips matches the term length lenders now require for project finance.

Two project-finance hurdles remain. First, downstream demand for Phase Two: the TotalEnergies offtake is non-binding, and the project will need additional Asian buyer signatures to underwrite the LNG plant. Japanese and Korean buyers had been the original anchor concept when the project was first proposed in the 2010s, but most have since signed Qatari and US Gulf Coast LNG offtakes. Second, contractor pricing: Worley's provisional EPCM does not yet lock in capex, and final pipeline construction costs will hinge on Alaska's compressed summer-only build window.