Polar LNG Launches Prudhoe Bay Project, Names Joel Riddle as CEO

Joel Riddle, who spent more than a decade trying to unlock a politically contested frontier gas basin in Australia's Northern Territory, will now apply that experience to one of the most scrutinized energy corridors on the planet: Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope.

Polar LNG announced its formation Monday, naming Riddle as president and chief executive officer and outlining a plan to build a shoreside liquefaction facility at Prudhoe Bay that would ship North Slope natural gas to Asian buyers. The company said it would upgrade West Dock at Prudhoe Bay, invest in next-generation icebreaking vessels, and use the existing hydrocarbon infrastructure around Prudhoe to move gas to market faster and at lower cost than a pipeline-based alternative.

"Alaska's North Slope holds one of the most significant undeveloped natural gas resources in the world," Riddle said in the announcement. "Polar LNG is uniquely positioned to bring this resource online, delivering reliable energy for Alaska and a strategic supply for the United States."

The project's central geographic argument: Prudhoe Bay sits roughly 3,600 miles from Japan, substantially closer to major Asian buyers than any Gulf Coast LNG terminal. The company said year-round Arctic shipping, enabled by ice-capable vessels, would provide buyers with supply access that seasonal operations cannot match.

For the North Slope Borough, Polar LNG's pitch involves property tax revenue tied to the facility, new local jobs in construction and logistics, and an expanded year-round presence in the Beaufort Sea that the company says would strengthen emergency response and support remote communities. Whether those promises translate into a formal community benefits agreement is one of the central questions borough officials and tribal corporations will press as the project seeks permits.

The technology Polar LNG intends to deploy has already attracted scrutiny before the company has filed a single permit. According to maritime industry reporting, the company is seeking U.S. government authorization to acquire modular liquefaction hardware from Russia's sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 project, developed by Novatek, whose gravity-based structure technology has been deployed for more than two decades in Siberian Arctic conditions. That sanctions question adds a federal regulatory layer, beyond the standard environmental and subsistence consultations required in Beaufort Sea whaling territory, to an already complex permitting stack. Texas investor Gentry Beach, who has ties to the Trump family, is among the company's backers.

Before joining Polar LNG, Riddle served as managing director and CEO of Tamboran Resources, a gas company pursuing unconventional reserves in the Beetaloo basin. He took that role in 2013 and navigated contested regulatory terrain and Indigenous land rights processes with structural similarities to what North Slope development requires. Earlier in his career, at Cobalt International Energy, he helped engineer a $1 billion initial public offering in 2009, before positions at ExxonMobil, Unocal and Murphy Oil. That combination of capital markets experience and frontier permitting work signals Polar LNG is more likely building a financing and permit stack than staging an imminent construction start.

Polar LNG described its project as complementary to the Alaska LNG pipeline being advanced by Glenfarne and the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation toward a final investment decision, a pipeline estimated to cost $44 billion. No construction cost estimate, production capacity figure, permitting timeline, or named gas offtake agreement has been disclosed. Those specifics, along with the outcome of any sanctions waiver application and the scope of tribal and borough outreach, will determine whether this project advances on a different trajectory than the long list of North Slope gas proposals that preceded it.