Cheniere Bets $15 Billion on World Gas Demand Despite Tariff
- New Texas terminal will hold Permian LNG for export overseas
- Industry worries that tariffs will increase, pinching sales
Photographer: F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg
Wearing a hardhat and orange vest, Ari Aziz climbs metal steps under a blazing sun until he’s standing atop an 180-foot-high tank in Corpus Christi, Texas. It’s big enough, he proudly points out, to hold a jumbo jet placed diagonally.
Aziz is supervising more than 100 workers who form a kind of SWAT team for Cheniere Energy Inc. They’re checking every valve and pipe that feeds the sparkling new tank. On Wednesday, Cheniere said it started producing liquefied natural gas for the first time at the plant. It plans to fill up the tank with 43 million gallons of super-chilled LNG that’s slated to be shipped to gas-hungry countries like China -- a rosy prospect unless trade tensions escalate between the world’s two biggest economies.