Cheniere Energy

Cheniere Energy, Inc. is a Houston-based energy company primarily engaged in LNG-related businesses. Cheniere owns and operate the Sabine Pass LNG receiving terminal in Louisiana and the Corpus Christi LNG terminal in Texas.

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council
Cheniere Energy joined the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as a member of its Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force on May 22, 2013, according to internal ALEC documents. See ALEC Corporations for more.

Gas exports
Corpus Christi LNG was originally planned as an LNG Import Terminal and 23 miles of 48-inch pipeline, approved by FERC in April 2005.

On December 16, 2011, Cheniere Energy, Inc. announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Corpus Christi Liquefaction, LLC, was developing an LNG export terminal at the site, which was previously permitted for a regasification terminal. The LNG export terminal site is located on the La Quinta Channel in San Patricio County, Texas, and it is anticipated that the terminal would be primarily supplied by reserves from the Eagle Ford Shale, located approximately sixty miles northwest of Corpus Christi, Texas. The proposed liquefaction project (Corpus Christi Project) is being designed for up to 13.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa). The company plans for the first "trains," or facilities where gas will be liquefied, to be in operation in 2018.

The company quickly signed 20-year LNG contracts with groups in the United Kingdom, Spain, India, and Korea. On March 25, 2013, UK energy company Centrica agreed to pay £10bn (US $15bn) over 20 years for 89bn cubic feet of gas annually from Cheniere. The first deliveries, by tanker, are expected in 2018.

History
The company drilled for oil and gas off the Gulf of Mexico in the 1990s. From 2000 to 2008, Cheniere committed to building several multi-billion-dollar LNG import terminals in Texas and Louisiana to serve the nation’s anticipated need for natural gas. The facilities were in various stages of completion when the import market dried up due to domestic fracking, reducing the company’s stock from $40 in October 2007 to $1.12 a year later.

In May 2011 the DOE granted Cheniere authority to export LNG to countries without a free trade agreement with the United States.

Export permit
In granting the export permits, federal energy regulators awarded the company a combination of federal permits that has been withheld from 20 competitors seeking similar authorizations. DC Bureau noted the company has had help from several Washington insiders, including:


 * Spencer Abraham, a former secretary of the Department of Energy (2001-2005), who formed a consulting firm in late 2005 that landed Cheniere as its first major client;
 * John Deutch, a former director of the CIA (1995-1996), recent chairman of a DOE advisory committee on natural gas, and a co-author of a 2011 MIT report promoting gas exports, who serves as a Cheniere director;
 * Vicky Bailey, a former commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (1993-2000) and Cheniere director with stock and options worth $1.6 million; and
 * Neil Bush, the younger brother of former President George W. Bush, who served as co-chairman of a company that partnered with Cheniere in 2001 and collected at least $22 million in royalty payments over a decade.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * LNG Terminals
 * United States and fracking

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