Cheniere earnings rebound, Corpus Christi LNG Stage 3 ahead of schedule
Cheniere Energy Partners LP returned to positive earnings in third-quarter 2023, despite a 57% drop in revenue to $2.1 billion. Third-quarter 2023 net income was $791 million. The company lost $514 million in third-quarter 2022 and attributed the year-on-year improvement to “non-cash favorable changes in fair value of commodity derivatives.”
Subsidiary Cheniere Marketing LLC entered into a 20-year supply agreement with Foran Energy Group Co. Ltd. for 900,000 tonnes/year (tpy) of LNG to be sold on a free-on-board basis indexed to the Henry Hub plus a liquefaction fee. The company described the contract as the first to support development of the 6.5-million tpy second train of its 20-million tpy Sabine Pass LNG expansion project. Sabine Pass currently produces 30 million tpy.
Cheniere earlier this year signed a long-term offtake deal with BASF supporting the expansion (OGJ Online, Aug. 22, 2023).
Jefferies Financial Group Inc. reported Cheniere management as asserting that its 10-million tpy Corpus Christi LNG Stage 3 project (CCL3) “is tracking months ahead of the guaranteed schedule” and could achieve first LNG by end-2024. The financial services company said Cheniere reaffirmed completion of CCL3 between second-quarter 2025 and second-half 2026. The project is 44.1% complete, with engineering more than 74% done and construction 7.5%, according to Jefferies. Corpus Christi LNG’s current capacity is 15 million tpy.
Cheniere said in its quarterly earnings call that it “needs to get going on construction of Train 8 and 9 at Corpus in 2026 as the first seven trains complete.” CCL3 consists of seven midscale trains. The company earlier this year requested US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permission authorization to build its 3-million tpy Corpus Christi Liquefaction Midscale 8-9 expansion (OGJ Online, Apr. 3, 2023).