A Woodlands-based liquefied natural gas company is considering building a $6 billion export plant on a small island north of Galveston once slated for a LNG import terminal that never materialized.
Galveston Wharves trustees considered leasing 185 acres on the northeast corner of Pelican Island to NextDecade, a privately owned company focused on developing two Texas LNG export facilities, the Fuel Fix reported.
The company has already secured land for a proposed Brownsville project and pending approval by the wharves board Monday, the firm intends to submit the necessary paperwork to start the lengthy permitting process required for such projects.
CEO Kathleen Eisbrenner said the company is in the “final stages” of securing financing for the Pelican Island project.
NextDecade’s proposals join a wave of new proposed LNG export facilities looking to capitalize on abundant supplies of cheap natural gas unlocked in the US shale boom. Chilling natural gas into a liquid allows the fuel to be transported on tanker ships, but companies need federal approval to ship LNG overseas to countries with which the United States doesn’t have free trade agreements.
With a proposed capacity of 6 million tons per year, enough to fill about five tankers per month, the Pelican Island project is a smaller-scale investment than other liquefaction plants proposed for the Gulf Coast.
Houston-based Cheniere Energy plans to add 19.8 million metric tons per year of liquefaction capacity to its Sabine Pass terminal now under construction. The Louisiana terminal is the nation’s first permitted by the federal government to sell gas to customers in non-Free Trade Agreement countries.
