WA premier talks up Asian trade THE United States is unlikely to export much gas from its shale boom to Japan, poising Western Australia as a major supplier to the Asian country over the next decade, WA Premier Colin Barnett says. Mr Barnett, who is in Asia on a week-long trade mission, said the Japanese seemed to have changed their view about America as a source of gas. After meeting government ministers on Thursday, the premier said they appeared to have recognised that there would be some gas exports from the US, but it would keep most for domestic use. Japan was going through "an agonising process" about its future energy sources after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, he said. Do they restart those nuclear power stations? Mr Barnett said on Fairfax radio on Friday. I suspect some may, but it will be a very slow process, so Japan will also have to dramatically increase its gas imports to fill that gap over the next 10 years or so. Mr Barnett, who will meet Tokyo Gas and Tokyo Electric later on Friday, also denied WA was in recession, insisting it was the strongest economy in Australia with good export growth and investment. "Any talk of recession, I think, is just economic illiteracy," he said. However, the premier did admit China's "golden days" of booming steel production, and therefore soaring iron ore exports, were "probably starting to diminish." "I think we've seen the rapid growth days and now we'll have more moderate growth," he said. WA still produced 25 per cent of the world's iron ore, but was reaching its "mature level," the premier said. The premier also said he had held talks with his Asian counterparts about the $6 billion Oakajee port planned for WA's Mid West, which Japanese backer Mitsubishi indefinitely mothballed last year. Mr Barnett still hopes China will rescue the project, saying there's a lot of Asian interest in it. Ahead of a meeting with Mitsubishi in Tokyo later on Friday, the premier said the project was still needed because nearby Geraldton port could only cope for the next three years or so, but would probably be slightly smaller scale.