Korea To Trump: We Aren’t Funding Your Alaska Pipeline, Yet

The Korean government denied Thursday morning that it has finalized an investment for a long-stalled Alaskan natural gas project, less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump tried to help boost the state’s Republican senator with a flashy Oval Office funding announcement.

“This is a great senator, who is totally responsible for this pipeline,” Trump said of Sen. Dan Sullivan, who stood beside him Wednesday at the White House. “This is a man that works with me, shoulder to shoulder.”

There is just one problem: Korea says the pipeline investment is still under review.

Korean President Lee Jae Myung and several other members of his government said Thursday that their investment in the Alaska pipeline remains conditional.

“The Alaska LNG project will proceed to working level under the preconditions that 1) its commercial viability is confirmed and 2) it complies with the legal procedures of the Republic of Korea,” Lee posted on X Thursday morning, according to a translation.

The government also issued a release saying “the two countries have agreed to begin reviewing the project,” and will proceed based on “commercial reasonableness requirements.”

The project involves a large-scale natural gas pipeline to transport energy from northern Alaska to the southern part of the state and would create a terminal that would help facilitate exports to Asian countries like South Korea and Japan. Presidents have been promising to tap into those isolated natural gas reserves in northern Alaska since the Carter administration, but several efforts have failed to attract investment due to concerns about cost and future returns.

Trump on Wednesday claimed South Korea had committed $54 billion in funding for the project as part of a $350 billion U.S. investment pledge Seoul made last year in a deal to lower threatened U.S. tariffs. He also said that Korea would spend around $120 billion on eight nuclear plants across four states and around $20 billion on a natural gas power plant in Texas.

It was the latest in a series of events the White House has held in recent days to tout massive foreign investment for projects in midterm battleground states — even if the details remain fuzzy.

Earlier this week, the administration highlighted a new steel plant in Iowa, but some industry experts are skeptical that the plant will be built given the troubled financial past of Mesabi Metallics, the company linked to it, and the fact that its projections are based on the current high U.S. steel prices.

Trump made it clear Wednesday that the LNG investment announcement had to do with Sullivan’s election chances. He denounced the fact that another candidate named Dan Sullivan — who is running as an independent — was allowed on Alaska’s ballot in November and told the reporters gathered that the incumbent Sullivan had his ear.

“I have to tell you this because he has an election,” Trump said at one point.

Trump and Sullivan emphasized Wednesday that the pipeline project would be transformative for Alaskans, and a developer claimed the project would be done in three years. No members of the Korean government spoke during the White House announcement.

If they had, they might have pointed out that the government in Seoul had already allocated its annual $20 billion U.S. investment commitment for the natural gas power plant in Texas — another state where Republicans are in a closely contested Senate race.