Venture Global’s management, including CEO Mike Sabel, revealed the expanion plans during the company’s first earnings call on Thursday.
The project will be comprised of 24 LNG trains and certain related infrastructure expected to produce “at least 18.6 mtpa.”
Venture Global said it has requested an “accelerated approval timeline to reflect the brownfield status and repeat design nature of the facility’s modules and key equipment.”
“We believe our first brownfield expansion project has the potential to be highly accretive and capital efficient due to its ability to leverage significant existing infrastructure developed during Plaquemines Phase I and Phase II,” the company said.
This includes LNG tanks, marine jetties, pipe racks, and marine offloading facilities.
Venture Global is targeting mid-2027 for a final investment decision and “18-to-24-month path to first LNG post-FID.”
The firm said in a statement later on Thursday the project would represent an approximately $18 billion additional investment in Louisiana, bringing Venture Global’s total investment in its current and planned US projects to over $75 billion.
Besides this expansion, the company recently also received approval from FERC to boost the capacity of its Plaquemines LNG terminal in Louisiana to 27.2 mtpa.
Venture Global took a final investment decision on the first phase of the Plaquemines project with a capacity of 13.3 mtpa and the related pipeline in May 2022.
In March 2023, the company sanctioned the second phase of the Plaquemines LNG export plant in Louisiana and also secured $7.8 billion in project financing.
The full project, including the second stage, will have a capacity of 20 mtpa coming from 36 modular units, configured in 18 blocks.
Each train has a capacity of 0.626 mtpa.
The company started producing LNG at the Plaquemines LNG plant on December 13, 2024, and the first shipment left the facility to Germany some two weeks after that.
The company expects to have activated 18 LNG trains at Plaquemines LNG by March 2025.
Venture Global is targeting a COD (commercial operations date) for the Plaquemines project in the fourth quarter of 2026 for Phase 1 and in mid-2027 for Phase 2.
