Japanese firms backing Calif. company’s plans for La. LNG plant

San Diego-based Sempra Energy announced this morning that a subsidiary, Cameron LNG, has inked deals with Japanese firms Mitsubishi Corp. and Mitsui & Co. to develop and build a $6 billion liquefied natural gas plant in Cameron Parish. In exchange for helping develop the plant, the Tokyo-based companies will each get one-third of the 1.7 billion cubic feet per day of export capacity, Sempra says. “These agreements with Mitsubishi and Mitsui represent a significant step forward in the development of a liquefaction facility at our Louisiana LNG terminal to support international natural gas markets,” says Sempra President Mark Snell. The LNG plant is to be part of an existing import terminal Sempra has in Hackberry. The facility is expected to be under construction by late next year and could begin exporting gas in late 2016, pending regulatory approval and debt financing, Sempra says. As Bloomberg reports, demand for natural gas in Asia has climbed as Japan’s 10 regional electric utilities bought record amounts of LNG last year to generate power, replacing the output of nuclear plants. All but one of the nation’s 54 power reactors has been shut after the March 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima.