US LNG Export Terminals -- An Update On The Race -- Golden Pass, Plaquemines, Cheniere Expansion -- November 20, 2022

Updates

December 19, 2022: update. 

Original Post 

Link here. Right now, this article is not behind a paywall at this link. The story is behind a paywall at Bloomberg. 

A must-read article for those interested in US LNG exports.

US LNG export terminals are tracked here.

The "list" tag.

Archived.

The article is too long to summarize on NFL Sunday, but this is what will be covered in depth at the linked article at the top.

While the US filled some of the supply gap by exporting huge quantities of liquefied natural gas from its seven plants, global markets are going to have to wait at least two more years before any new LNG supplies from the US come online. Three large-scale projects requiring more than $30 billion of financing are now under construction in Texas and Louisiana, yet none will be ready next year.

Two of the projects, Golden Pass LNG near Port Arthur, Texas, and the first phase of Plaquemines LNG, along the Mississippi River about 25 miles south of New Orleans, are expected to begin production in 2024, setting up a race to see which will be the eighth US export terminal. The third project, by Cheniere Energy, the US’s largest LNG exporter, will expand an existing plant in Corpus Christi and won’t begin production until late 2025.

Natural gas traders, government officials and industry observers will spend the next few years watching the projects for any signs of delay or movements ahead of schedule.

Golden Pass is a joint venture between industry titans Qatar Energy and Exxon Mobil. It began construction in May 2019.

Plaquemines, a project by the closely held Virginia-based developer, Venture Global LNG, quietly started construction in August 2021. Venture Global pulled off a near-miracle in January 2022 when it began production at its first LNG plant, Calcasieu Pass in Cameron, Louisiana, in a record 29 months after securing financing. Many wonder if it can repeat or beat that success with Plaquemines.

I still remember, vividly, the day I first wrote about all these US LNG export terminals that were planned -- that might have been ten years ago -- and getting a note from a reader who suggested it was all "pie in the sky," wouldn't happen. 

That reader never anticipated the European energy crisis -- another story that was "predicted" on the blog back in 2013 and did not anticipate the amount of natural gas that would be produced by the Bakken revolution. Amazing how things turned out. 

By the way, both the EU and Saudi Arabia saw this coming even if a lot of Americans did not.