Washington (Platts)--23Jan2013/520 pm EST/2220 GMT

During US Senator Lisa Murkowski's recent trip to Asia, the Alaska Republican said Japan's deputy prime minister Taro Aso pressed her for assurance that the US could soon begin exporting liquefied natural gas to address his country's urgent energy needs.

It was an assurance she could not give, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee told reporters Wednesday.

"It's one thing to come calling and offering up a resource, it's another to be able to deliver it," Murkowski said. "We're not able to make that commitment now."

Demand for energy imports in Japan may be at historic highs after its energy policies were thrown into disarray following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011. Japan, which was 30% reliant on nuclear power and planned to be 50% by 2025, now imports nearly all its power.

Murkowski, who toured the damage from Fukushima while in Japan last week, said Japanese lawmakers are "scrambling" to find enough energy to meet its needs, not just from LNG, but from coal and fuel oil as well.

"Basically anything that will give them power," she said.

This unprecedented demand has created a substantial opportunity for US energy producers and exporters, but the timing could ultimately frustrate any efforts, Murkowski said.

While plans are in the works for an estimated $65 billion project to export LNG from Alaska's North Slope, Murkowski said Wednesday that the pipeline likely would not be ready until 2019, at the earliest. Alaskan Governor Sean Parnell recently set a February 15 deadline for the producers and TransCanada Corp. to settle on a concept for the pipeline.

At the same time, the Department of Energy has yet to decide whether it will approve licenses for the export of LNG to countries, including Japan, which do not have a formal free-trade agreement with the US.

Under current law, DOE is supposed to quickly approve applications to export LNG to countries that have FTAs with the US. But in cases involving non-FTA countries, DOE must determine whether those exports are in the US' "public interest."

A recent DOE-commissioned study found that expanding LNG exports would have a minimal impact on domestic prices while boosting the US economy, but lawmakers, including Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and the incoming chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, have questioned the veracity of the report's data. The first round of public comments on that report are due this week.

Murkowski said that in Japan, and also in Taiwan, where she also visited, the demand for LNG is growing dramatically as they move from nuclear power.

"The interest in Asia is clearly there, now it's up to us to make that determination as to whether or not that resource will be made available," she said.

Murkowski also said Wednesday that she hopes to unveil a long-awaited energy blueprint as early as next week.

She said the plan will be an outline, not a specific bill, and is "meant to be the foundation for good ideas on energy issues."

--Brian Scheid, brian_scheid@platts.com --Edited by Carla Bass, carla_bass@platts.com