Near Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Corpus Christi plant on the Texas coast, construction of the Stage 3 project will add seven modular midscale “trains,” the industry term for the giant units that convert natural gas to its liquefied form.
Photographer: Mark Felix/BloombergA $290 Billion Investment Cements Natural Gas’s Relevance for Decades
The biggest wave ever of liquefied natural gas megaprojects is about to ramp up as the sector bets on its place in the clean-energy transition.
As delegates at the annual UN climate talks in Dubai celebrated last month’s historic deal to move away from fossil fuels, tens of thousands of laborers just across the Persian Gulf in Qatar were chasing a different goal: make the world’s largest natural-gas export facility even bigger.
At a time when some see oil demand nearing its peak and coal is likely to face a slow but steady decline, the energy sector is betting hundreds of billions of dollars that the third leading fossil fuel — natural gas — has a place in the world’s energy mix through at least 2050. That lifespan hinges on one last torrent of investment into the massive terminals that liquefy and export super-chilled liquefied natural gas, or LNG, for countries not yet ready or able to make the transition to renewables.