Cheniere Energy

Cheniere Energy is a Houston-based liquefied natural gas producer and exporter operating the two largest LNG export terminals in the United States, at Sabine Pass in Cameron Parish, Louisiana and Corpus Christi near Gregory, Texas. The company develops, owns and operates its terminals, running a continuous construction program with Bechtel as its engineering and construction contractor across both sites. Corpus Christi Stage 3 reached substantial completion in August 2026 when Bechtel turned over the seventh and final liquefaction train, lifting Cheniere’s production capacity by more than 20% to roughly 56 million tonnes per annum. In May 2026 the company awarded Bechtel a $4.69 billion contract to expand Sabine Pass.

Cheniere started in 1996 as an oil and gas exploration company. The pivot that defined it came later: first a plan to import liquefied natural gas, then, as American shale supply turned the economics around, a plan to export it instead. The company shipped its first cargo in February 2016 and became the first exporter of LNG from the contiguous United States.

Ten years on the numbers are large. Sabine Pass in Cameron Parish, Louisiana runs six liquefaction trains with roughly 30 million tonnes per annum of capacity. Corpus Christi in South Texas adds eight trains and about 23 mtpa, and holds the distinction of being the first greenfield LNG export facility built in the lower 48 rather than converted from an import terminal. Combined investment across the two sites is around 50 billion dollars.

For anyone tracking heavy industrial construction, that last figure is the relevant one. Cheniere develops, owns and operates the terminals, which puts it on the owner side of every contract and has kept a continuous build program running for more than a decade.

The commercial model shapes the construction program more than the engineering does. About 95 percent of contracted capacity is sold under long-term take-or-pay agreements, with the balance handled by an integrated trading arm that charters vessels and markets cargoes directly. Long-dated contracts are what make multi-billion-dollar trains financeable, and they explain why capacity gets built in discrete, fully subscribed stages rather than speculatively.

Cargoes have reached more than 40 markets across five continents. Cheniere passed 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 and 4,000 cumulative export cargoes faster than any other LNG producer, and took both Energy Company of the Year and Excellence in Energy-LNG at the 2025 Platts Global Energy Awards.

Headquarters is Houston, with a workforce of more than 1,700 and offices in London, Singapore, Beijing, Dubai, Tokyo and Washington, D.C. The business it runs is gas procurement, liquefaction, pipeline transport, vessel chartering and delivery to regasification terminals abroad, a chain that only works if every link is built and commissioned on schedule.