Europe And China Face Off Over U.S. LNG Supply Deals – OilPrice.com

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For sellers, the U.S. LNG developers and exporters, more long-term purchase deals with Europe and Asia mean more chances for projects to contract future volumes from planned export facilities and underpin financing and final investment decisions for a greater number of U.S. LNG export terminals.  
“More volumes are good for the market, and with the new deals we will see more LNG export projects being developed,” Sindre Knutsson, partner of gas and LNG research at Rystad Energy, told the Financial Times.
Despite concerns about cost inflation, developers of LNG projects in the United States are set to approve a record-high volume of export capacity this year, driven by rising global LNG demand and increased long-term contracting from customers willing to boost energy security.  Related: Saudi Arabia And Iran To Jointly Exploit Oil & Gas Fields
Venture Global LNG has already approved one project this year—it announced in March the FID and successful closing of the $7.8 billion project financing for the second phase of the Plaquemines LNG facility. This, along with Sempra’s Port Arthur LNG Phase 1 project in Jefferson County, Texas, were the two projects approved so far in 2023. 
The third one, NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG project, targets FID in early July, after signing framework agreements with Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and TotalEnergies, and selling 16.2 million tons per annum (MTPA) of LNG from Phase 1, or 92% of nameplate capacity, under long-term agreements, sufficient to support the binding debt commitments from these leading lenders and the near-term FID of the 17.61 MTPA Phase 1.
Supermajor TotalEnergies will hold a 16.7% interest in the first phase of the project, and has agreed to purchase 5.4 million MTPA of LNG from Phase 1 for 20 years and has options to purchase LNG from Train 4 and Train 5. 
In another major long-term offtake agreement between an energy major and a U.S. LNG exporter, Equinor signed last month a 15-year purchase agreement of around 1.75 million tons of LNG per year from Cheniere, which will double the volumes of LNG that Equinor will export out of Cheniere’s LNG terminals on the U.S. Gulf Coast.