The Lake Charles LNG project in Louisiana now has until 2031 to dispatch its first cargo, according to an order by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) granting owner Energy Transfer LP’s request to extend the deadline from 2025.
The DOE decision also adds a three-year “make-up period” to the duration of the project’s export term. That means if Lake Charles LNG has not exhausted its authorized export volume by 2050, it has until 2053 to export the remaining volumes.
“Granting this commencement extension furthers the Trump administration’s priority of unleashing American energy, a radical shift from the last administration, whose actions undermined the progress of Lake Charles LNG for years”, Tala Goudarzi, principal deputy assistant secretary of DOE’s Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Office, said in an online statement issued by the department.
“There are currently eight large-scale LNG projects operating in the United States and several additional projects are expanding or under construction”, DOE added. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the department has approved applications from projects that will export more than 13.8 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas as LNG, a volume greater than the world’s second-largest LNG-exporting nation is exporting today”.
Lake Charles LNG is permitted to export a cumulative 851 billion cubic feet a year of natural gas equivalent to countries without a free trade agreement with the U.S., under two DOE orders originally issued 2016 and 2017.
Energy Transfer says the project, a conversion from an existing regasification site, has all authorizations from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. In September 2024, it awarded an engineering, procurement and construction contract to a joint venture between KBR Inc. and Technip Energies NV.
In 2023 the DOE under the Biden administration denied Energy Transfer’s application to extend to 2028 the 2025 deadline for the project to begin exportation.
In April 2025 the DOE said it had removed Biden-era restrictions on requests to extend LNG projects’ export commencement deadlines. A project for which such a request is made no longer must be under construction or demonstrate that circumstances outside its control prevented the start of exportation within seven years.
Instead, the DOE will review requests “on a case-by-case basis”, the DOE said in an online statement April 1, noting the permitting process is already “extensive”.
On April 17, 2025, Energy Transfer filed a new application seeking to extend its deadline from 2025 to 2031, which has now been approved.
In June, Energy Transfer and Chevron Corp. signed an agreement raising Chevron’s offtake from Lake Charles LNG to three million metric tons per annum (MMtpa) for 20 years. In May, MidOcean Energy signed a heads of agreement to shoulder 30 percent of construction costs and be entitled to 30 percent of production. In April, Kyushu Electric Power Co. placed an offtake of one MMtpa for 20 years.
To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com
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