The Race is On - New Long-Term Contracts Propel Multiple North American LNG Projects Toward FID

RBN Energy Blogcast

It has been an epic year for U.S. LNG. After COVID-19 and the subsequent global market crash brought LNG development to a standstill and shut-in production from existing terminals in 2020, this year has seen global prices repeatedly smash previous record highs, driving existing terminals to operate at peak levels and renewing interest in new LNG buildout. U.S. feedgas demand and LNG production will close out the year at all-time highs, but with just a few weeks left it looks like 2021 will be the first year since 2017 that no new LNG terminals will achieve a positive final investment decision. But that’s driven more by the tailwinds of 2020 — the back half of 2021 has seen a tremendous amount of commercial activity in the LNG sector. More than 21 million metric tons per annum of medium- and long-term capacity from planned LNG projects has been sold this year, creating enough forward momentum for multiple projects to move toward FID in 2022. We cover all the latest developments in our LNG Voyager Quarterly report, and in today’s RBN blog we take a look at some of the recent LNG deals and what they tell us about the future of North American LNG.