Cheniere signs a 15-year SPA with Equinor to supply 1.75 Mt/year of US LNG

The US company Cheniere Energy has entered into a 15-year sales and purchase agreement (SPA) with Norways Equinor to supply 1.75 Mt/year of LNG from the Sabine Pass LNG expansion project located on the Louisiana/Texas border in southern United States. The delivery of half of the volume associated with the SPA will start in 2027, while the delivery of the remaining half, which is subject to a positive final investment decision (FID) on the first train of the Sabine Pass Liquefaction Expansion Project will commence at the end of this decade.

This new SPA is the second contract for the expansion, after a deal with Korea Southern Power (KOSPO), which agreed to purchase approximately 0.4 Mt/year of LNG from 2027 through 2046. In February 2023, Cheniere submitted an expansion plan to the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for its Sabine Pass Liquefaction (SPL) Project, which will include up to three large-scale liquefaction trains totalling 19.5 Mt/year of LNG. The SPL Expansion Project will be adjacent to the existing Sabine Pass Liquefaction Project, which came online between 2016 and 2022 and currently has six liquefaction trains totalling a capacity of 27 Mt/year.

As of end-2022, at the national level the US had an LNG liquefaction capacity standing at nearly 80 Mt/year, and a regasification capacity standing at 131.5 Mt/year. The country exported more than 146 bcm (108 Mt) of LNG in 2021.