Trump says Taiwan commits $70-80bn in Alaska LNG offtake
Taiwan's economic affairs ministry says it plans to buy 6 million tonnes of the gas a year and could invest up to $4.4bn in the project.
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UpdateWednesday, October 14, 2026 at 12:32 PM ET
Trump also said the Alaska LNG project is now a US federal government project, with all necessary permits and authorizations secured, and called the Taiwan offtake commitment the largest in history. He described South Korea's related $50bn pledge as an infrastructure investment tied to a broader trade and investment deal. The claims again rest on Trump's own account.
President Trump said Taiwan has agreed to an offtake commitment of between $70bn and $80bn for the Alaska LNG project, along with a $4.4bn equity investment, crediting Commerce Secretary Lutnick with securing the deal.
Taiwan's economic affairs ministry confirmed on Wednesday that it plans to buy 6 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas annually once extraction begins, and that it could invest up to $4.4bn in the project, according to the Associated Press. The ministry said the project is expected to start supporting Taiwan's gas supply in 2032 at the earliest. Trump separately said Taiwan had agreed to buy 30% of the gas from the pipeline over 20 years, according to Bloomberg, and CNBC reported that Taiwan's state-owned CPC Corp had reached an agreement last year with Alaska Gasline Development Corp to purchase LNG and invest in the project.
The Alaska LNG project is estimated to cost $44bn and would export 20 million tonnes of LNG a year, carrying gas from the Prudhoe Bay and Point Thomson fields through a pipeline to a liquefaction plant at Nikiski, according to project filings summarised on Wikipedia.
The figures echo a pattern seen with South Korea's $50bn Alaska LNG pledge and Taiwan's own earlier 30%-of-supply commitment: South Korea's industry ministry has said no such $50bn agreement exists, and that the two sides had only agreed to begin reviewing a potential pipeline deal, according to a Wikipedia summary of the dispute. If confirmed, the scale described by Trump, $70bn to $80bn in offtake plus $4.4bn in equity, would make Taiwan the largest single commitment disclosed so far for the project, larger than the Korean pledge, and would extend the administration's recent framing of Taiwan as a security and economic partner facing Chinese pressure into a commercial deal beyond diplomatic statements. As with the Korean and earlier Taiwan pledges, the figures rest on Trump's own account and have not yet been confirmed by Taiwanese officials or reflected in a signed agreement.