Ex-Polar LNG chief says Russia's Novatek supplied undisclosed startup funding

The former chief executive of Polar LNG, a private venture that wants to export natural gas from Alaska's North Slope, says Russia's Novatek supplied at least some of the company's startup money, as reported Friday by The New York Times and the Financial Times.

Joel Riddle and at least two other senior executives have left the company. Polar LNG named an acting CEO on Friday, said its work complies with U.S. law and called Riddle a disgruntled former employee who was terminated for cause. Riddle had submitted his resignation six days before the company sent him a termination letter, according to the Times.

Polar LNG is not Alaska LNG, the state-partnered project led by Glenfarne Group. Alaska LNG would carry North Slope gas through an 807-mile pipeline to Nikiski. Its project company is owned 75% by Glenfarne and 25% by the state's Alaska Gasline Development Corp., Alaska News reported this month. Polar LNG is a separate proposal to liquefy gas at a nearshore terminal on the North Slope and ship it from there.

Riddle said he had been led to believe the money came from Tech Wave Industrial Projects Management, a company based in Abu Dhabi, and later learned that at least some of it originated with Novatek, a Russian natural gas producer.

Messages reviewed by the Times show Novatek executives discussing as much as $15 million for Tech Wave to support Polar LNG, including an expected first transfer of $5 million. Legal memos from the law firm Baker Botts, which Riddle attached to his resignation letter, said Treasury's sanctions enforcement office had raised potential Russia-related sanctions concerns about Polar LNG's ties to Novatek, the paper reported.

The Financial Times reviewed messages from Novatek executive Denis Solovyov discussing financing for the project and efforts to speed up transfers. It also reported that most of Polar's senior leadership team had left, including chief financial officer Dan Chandra and executive vice president Jim Smith. Alaska News has not obtained the messages or the memos.

In a statement Friday, Polar LNG named Tim Talkington acting CEO of Polar Train LNG, the project's operating company. Talkington, president of the related Polar Eagle LNG, spent more than 17 years at Goldman Sachs, where he was CEO of Goldman Sachs Bank Russia until August 2022, the company said.

The company said Tech Wave has provided financing and started preliminary engineering work involving U.S. contractors. It said it has applied to the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control for a license to buy an unfinished gravity-based structure, a foundation for a nearshore plant, from Novatek. Polar LNG said it is investigating claims about Riddle that may lead to litigation and would not comment further.

In statements to the two papers, Novatek said it was moving to become a minority shareholder in Polar LNG, had given Tech Wave the right to use its technology in Alaska and had signed a memorandum with Polar Train LNG in April. It said the project would need U.S. and Russian approval, and it denied that access to its technology depended on lifting U.S. sanctions on Arctic LNG 2, a Novatek-led project in the Russian Arctic.

Novatek itself has been under targeted U.S. restrictions since 2014 that limit certain new financing but don't bar every dealing with the company. Arctic LNG 2 has been fully blocked since November 2023, and Treasury has also blocked several Novatek subsidiaries, meaning Americans generally can't deal with them without a license. Treasury hasn't said publicly whether any of the reported financing broke U.S. sanctions, and no court has ruled on it.

Polar LNG's interest in Russian equipment was public from the start. When the company launched in March, Riddle said it hoped to get Treasury permission to buy equipment, including a partly built liquefaction plant, from Arctic LNG 2, as reported by Reuters. The company said then that the first phase would cost $8 billion to $9 billion and that it wanted more than half its financing to come from U.S. capital.

What's new is Riddle's account that Novatek was already financing the company and shaping its strategy while Polar was still seeking federal permission to buy Russian equipment.

The Times also reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the Alaska proposal in September with President Donald Trump's peace envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and that there was no indication either envoy was aware of Polar LNG or its ties to Novatek. A U.S. official said the deal had only been broadly mentioned, with no detailed discussions.

Polar LNG says the project is still active and seeking American investors and partners. The company says it is also evaluating supplying gas to Southcentral Alaska, and it is targeting first deliveries by the end of 2030, subject to permits, financing and engineering.

No federal agency has publicly announced an enforcement action or finding related to the allegations.