Once complete, the LNG plant itself would support at least 200 permanent jobs, he said. A study by the Perryman Group, a Waco-based economic analyst, estimates the operation would support another 3,000 indirect jobs in the county, Markham-Hill said. Markham-Hill said the natural gas liquefaction plant/export terminal would take an investment of up to $20 billion to build and would create 4,000 to 5,000 construction jobs for up to seven years.Ĭonstruction of the Rio Brave Pipeline, a related project to bring natural gas to the plant from a hub near Kingsville, would employ 800 to 1,100 workers, he said. These are long-term projects looking at long-term supply and demand.” “Our expectation is coming online at the end of 2020. While there may be pessimism in the market, our experience in the marketplace is quite different. But that is a firm indication that there is demand there. “Those will be negotiated over the next year. “Now, these aren’t binding contracts,” he said. James Markham-Hill, manager of communications for NextDecade, LLC, Rio Grande’s parent company, said in February that the number had since grown “quite substantially.” In November, Rio Grande LNG announced it had secured nonbinding contracts for about 14 million tons of LNG per year from customers in Asia and Europe. In addition to FERC approval, companies have to nail down long-term contracts for LNG exports before investors will sign on to build the massively expensive projects. Rio Grande LNG is one of three companies whose proposals are undergoing review by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. In October, the company took the first steps toward developing a local workforce and third-party vendors that want to be involved in construction. Houston-based Rio Grande LNG, for its part, says it’s looking down the road. Meanwhile, proposed LNG export terminals in the United States face competition from domestic and foreign terminals that are further along or have already been built. Energy Information Administration, in a report released March 4, termed “uncertainty in global LNG demand.” It was the first-ever LNG export from the lower 48 states, though the shipment took place against a backdrop of what the U.S. exported a load of LNG to Brazil from its new Sabine Pass, Louisiana, terminal on Feb. The media outlet also reported that the future of 19 other British Columbian export projects is in doubt due to the weak market.Ĭloser to home, Cheniere Energy Inc. AltaGas Ltd., a Canadian company, dropped plans late last month to ship liquefied natural gas from the north coast of British Columbia because it couldn’t find enough Asian buyers willing to sign long-term “off-take” contracts, according to The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. Still, for exporters the short term looks bleak. View the story online at The Brownsville HeraldĪ worldwide glut of natural gas means it’s a lousy time to be trying to export the stuff, though proposals for liquefied natural gas exports from the Port of Brownsville are focused on the future, not the present.
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