Cheniere LNG export plant could get final approval next week

Cheniere Energy Inc., the natural gas importer that lost $1.2 billion in a decade, is poised to become the sole U.S. exporter of fuel from the shale bonanza that has turned the nation into the world’s biggest gas producer. As Bloomberg reports, the government may decide as soon as next week on Cheniere’s request to build a $10 billion plant in south Louisiana that would be the largest in the United States to liquefy gas and load it onto ocean-going tankers. Cheniere CEO Charif Souki’s next step, after clearing U.S. approvals, will be to complete fundraising for the project. As the only company with a 20-year Energy Department license to export continental liquefied gas to nations without U.S. free-trade agreements, Cheniere will have a near-monopoly on selling LNG to some of the biggest gas importers—Japan and Spain, for example—which currently pay as much as nine times more for the fuel than it costs in U.S. markets. Seven rival export-license requests are on hold while the Energy Department studies the potential economic impacts of shipping abroad. “The global LNG market is tight, and spot prices are going to be quite high at least until 2018,” when several new Australian LNG export projects are scheduled to ramp up, says Asish Mohanty, senior global LNG analyst at Wood Mackenzie, the Edinburgh-based energy researcher. Read the full story here. And check out another Daily Report story from earlier this week about Trunkline LNG’s hopes to get a facility under construction in Lake Charles by 2014 here.