US LNG exporter Cheniere has signed a deal to supply liquefied natural gas to France’s Engie for a period of eleven years.
Cheniere Marketing and Corpus Christi Liquefaction, both units of Cheniere, revealed this in a letter sent to the Department of Energy (DOE) on July 23, but the letter was not available for the public until recently.
According to the letter, Cheniere and Engie signed the sales and purchase agreement on June 23.
Under the deal, Cheniere’s marketing unit would deliver 0.4 million mt to 1.2 million mt per year of LNG to Engie on a free on board basis, the letter says.
Also, the US firm would supply the volumes from the Corpus Christi plant in Texas, beginning in 2021, it said.
Cheniere’s units did not provide any additional information regarding the contract.
Several new LNG deals
This new contract adds to three LNG supply deals Cheniere recently signed with China’s Sinochem Group, Glencore, and a unit of Chinese independent gas distributor ENN.
However, Cheniere announced all these deals via official statements, but not the Engie deal.
Cheniere’s marketing unit and Engie signed a 5-year deal back in 2015 for the delivery of LNG cargoes on an ex-ship basis primarily to the Montoir de Bretagne regasification terminal in France.
The SPA included the delivery of up to 12 cargoes per year, from 2018 to 2023, with the contract prices linked to Northern European indices.
Last year, Engie said it has decided to pull out of talks with US player NextDecade to buy LNG from the proposed Rio Grande export plant in Texas.
Several reports said then that the French government had pressured Engie to cancel the talks due to the effects of shale gas extraction methods such as fracking and their impact on climate change. Engie has not commented on these claims.
