Some LNG Customers Reject New Contracts with Venture Global
The chickens are coming home to roost for Venture Global, an LNG export company that uses loopholes and excuses to avoid selling LNG cargoes to the companies that signed contracts to buy those cargoes. The company recently launched an initial public offering (IPO), hoping to raise $2.3 billion (see Unashamed Venture Global LNG Plans Huge $2.3 Billion IPO). It ended up raising $1.75 billion, or 24% less than it wanted. That’s one chicken roosting. But another, much bigger chicken, is now roosting: Large LNG buyers, like French energy giant Total, are refusing to sign any deals for Venture Global’s LNG. Why? They don’t trust Venture Global. Read More “Some LNG Customers Reject New Contracts with Venture Global”
One year ago, the sleazy Joe Biden slapped a “pause” on allowing the Department of Energy (DOE) to review and issue export approvals for any new LNG export facilities (see 
LNG exports have become an important (even critical) part of the natural gas sector in the U.S. Feedgas flowing to LNG facilities is closely watched by many people, including traders and industry analysts. As we pointed out yesterday, lower feedgas flows to a single LNG facility can lower the NYMEX natural gas futures price (see 
Based on comments in two different Reuters articles published yesterday, the Freeport LNG export facility is again experiencing an outage. It appears to be a partial outage. Freeport, in typical tight-lipped fashion, refuses to say anything. According to Reuters, flows to the 2.1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) Freeport facility were on track to drop to 1.4 Bcf/d yesterday, down from 1.6 Bcf/d on Sunday and an average of 2.1 Bcf/d over the prior seven days. Here we go again. 
The U.S. LNG industry and natural gas pipeline operators expect the incoming Trump Administration to launch a new wave of capacity expansions that would cement America’s position as the world’s largest LNG exporter. President-elect Donald Trump is preparing an energy package to expand domestic oil and gas drilling on federal lands and offshore lease sales, in addition to expediting LNG export permits. You can expect Trump to unpause Biden’s pause on new LNG export approvals, likely on his first day in office. 
Venture Global, which uses loopholes and excuses to avoid selling LNG cargoes to the companies that signed contracts to buy those cargoes, is about to launch an initial public offering (IPO). According to Reuters, Venture Global will pitch investors in its IPO this week. The company hopes to raise $2.3 billion, which values the company at $110 billion. 
RBN Energy recently concluded a two-part series on LNG delays and what’s causing delays in bringing more export capacity online. Friday’s Part 2 of the series looks at recent court rulings and regulatory issues and their impact on U.S. LNG development. Yes, Joe Biden’s ill-timed “pause” on the Department of Energy issuing new export approvals certainly had a big impact (see 
At the end of December, Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG export facility officially shipped its first cargo…to Germany. Unfortunately for Venture Global’s contracted customers, they will have to wait to receive their legally contracted shipments. Venture Global has admitted it will (as it has with the its Calcasieu Pass facility) pretend the Plaquemines LNG is not “commercially ready,” allowing the company to cream the market and make more money for the first couple of years (see 
U.S. natural gas demand from LNG plants (the feedgas that flows to the plants) hit a new all-time record high on Tuesday, Dec. 31st, the last day of the year. Feedgas flows climbed to 15.2 billion cubic feed (Bcf) in a sign of a strong year ahead from the startup of two new gas-processing plants. Venture Global LNG’s Plaquemines plant in Louisiana and Cheniere Energy’s Corpus Christi Stage 3 expansion in Texas recently came online (at least partially), driving feedgas flows higher. 
Just as the pandemic began to unfold in early 2020, Shell pulled out of a 50/50 joint venture partnership with Energy Transfer (ET) to build a new LNG export facility in Lake Charles, Louisiana (see 
Yesterday, MDN brought you the news that the Biden Department of Energy (DOE) and its grossly incompetent leader, Jennifer Granholm, released a fake “study” that recommends not approving any more LNG export facilities, claiming we already have enough in the pipeline to last us forevermore (see 
According to Dan Eberhart, CEO of Canary, LLC (the sixth-largest wellhead services company in the U.S.), the world is bracing for another energy crisis this winter, with natural gas markets “teetering” on the brink of volatility. It would not take much to push the world into another run on natural gas supplies, which would push prices to “multi-year highs.” The “looming crisis” underscores the urgent need for robust and consistent American energy policies—something the Biden administration’s recent pause on new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export approvals has failed to deliver. The antidote, the fix for this fragile market, is the incoming Trump-Vance administration. 
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), headed by the ultra-dumb Jennifer Granholm, issued a bogus “study” (copy below) arguing that no new approvals should be granted for additional LNG exports. The report (and Granholm, in a cover letter) argues that “the amounts [of LNG export facilities] that have already been approved will be more than sufficient to meet global demand for U.S. LNG for decades to come.” In other words, the so-called elites know better than the free market how many LNG export plants the country should support. Granholm argues in favor of a command-and-control approach (i.e., Communism) over a free market, free enterprise approach to approving new LNG exports. 
This is VERY interesting. The nonpartisan S&P Global, which never (we mean NEVER) seeks to ruffle political feathers, released a study on LNG exports on the very same day as the Biden/Granholm Department of Energy released its LNG export study. The S&P study, which came out a few hours earlier than the DOE study, says more U.S. LNG exports will NOT raise the domestic price of natural gas, at least not appreciably. The Biden-corrupted DOE report says the opposite, that more LNG exports will cause domestic natural gas prices to go through the roof (and consequently, we shouldn’t build more LNG export facilities). Who do you believe? The company that is one of THE largest financial analysis companies in the world, that manages the S&P 500 Index and S&P credit ratings? Or lying, sore-loser politicians like the ditsy Jennifer Granholm and Joementia Biden?