LNG Groundhog Day: Cheniere Energy Signs Yet Another Gas Export Deal on Gulf Coast

onDec 1, 2011 @ 14:43 PST

Another day, another unconventional gas export deal signed. Nascent North American LNG (liquefied natural gas) export deals are happening so fast and furiously that it is hard to keep track of them all.

The latest: On November 21, Cheniere Energy Partners signed a 20-year LNG export deal with Gas Natural Fenosa, an energy company which operates primarily in Spain but also in such countries as Italy, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Morocco. Cheniere will maintain the Sabine Pass LNG export terminal located off of Sabine Lake between Texas and Louisiana, which feeds into the Gulf of Mexico, while Gas Natural Fenosa will ship the gas to the global market.

Cheniere, which made waves when its CEO Charif Souki announced that his corporation’s business model would center exclusively around LNG export terminals, also recently signed a 20-year export deal with BG Group, short for British Gas Group.

Like the recent export deal with BG Group, which involves carrying fracked unconventional gas from various shale basins around the United States via pipelines to the Sabine Pass LNG export terminal, the Gas Natural Fenosa deal also centers around the export of gas from Sabine Pass to the global market.

This new deal will presumably center around shipment of LNG to the Latin American market, whereas the BG Group deal centers around exports to the European market.

A press release explaining the details of the deal reads, “LNG will be loaded onto Gas Natural Fenosa’s vessels…[with] twenty years commencing upon the date of first commercial delivery, and an extension option of up to ten years. LNG deliveries are expected to commence in 2016.”

It is increasingly clear that export is the name of the game for the gas companies fracking all over America, exploding the industry’s claims to support U.S. energy independence.

A recent Senate hearing confirmed that the industry’s plans to export gas from the U.S. will raise gas prices for Americans.

So much for that oil and gas industry canard that unconventional gas fracking “promises more affordable energy for Americans.”

Image Credit: Oleksandr Kalinichenko / Shutterstock

By Steve Horn

Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.