The notice to proceed came late last month. Bechtel has picked up a limited notice to proceed on Train 7 at Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass plant in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, adding a $4.69 billion job to what’s already the largest LNG construction backlog in the business. Owner Cheniere put the contract value on the record in a May 22 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
It’s a familiar address for the Reston, Virginia builder. Bechtel has been working at Sabine Pass for two decades, and Train 7 reads less like a new client win than the next chapter of a relationship that helped invent the U.S. LNG export business.
What Train 7 Adds at Sabine Pass
Train 7 is part of Phase 1 of the Sabine Pass Liquefaction Expansion. When it’s running, it’ll have a peak production rate of about 6 million tonnes per annum, according to Cheniere. That capacity lands on top of roughly 30 MTPA already flowing from the six trains Bechtel delivered at the site between 2016 and 2022.
The plant straddles the line between Cameron Parish and Jefferson County, Texas. Bechtel built the original LNG receiving terminal there between 2005 and 2009, back when the facility was meant to import gas. The pivot from import terminal to the first large-scale export plant in the continental U.S. is a big part of why the Gulf Coast now anchors global LNG trade.
A Backlog Most Builders Can’t Match
Bechtel isn’t short on liquefaction work. The firm says it’s building 17 trains across five sites in two countries, with five midscale trains already turned over. That portfolio includes about $9 billion of work at NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG in Brownsville, Texas, and the Woodside Louisiana LNG terminal in Sulphur, a job whose total contract costs run to $27 billion. The appetite for raw material is reshaping supply chains across the South, as Exchange covered when Smackover Lithium lined up its builders in Arkansas.
“As global energy demand rises and countries seek secure, reliable supply, LNG will continue to play an essential role in the energy mix for decades to come,” said Paul Marsden, president of Bechtel’s energy business, in the announcement.
The economics behind that confidence aren’t universal. LNG projects live and die on long-term offtake contracts and final investment decisions that can slip for years. But for the trains that clear FID, the build scope is enormous, and a small set of contractors with cryogenic experience keep winning the work. Sabine Pass Train 7 is the latest proof that, in liquefaction, incumbency compounds.