Tellurian posts net loss and reports commercial progress on Lake Charles LNG export project
Tellurian Inc., developer of the Driftwood LNG export project in Louisiana, ended its year with a loss of around $125.7 million, as it made commercial progress on its plant to be constructed near Lake Charles with affiliated pipelines.
Tellurian, listed on the Nasdaq exchange, said it ended the year with $133.7M of cash and cash equivalents and about $57.0 million in debt.
The final environmental impact statement was issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in January 2019 to develop the liquefaction plant to produce around 27.6 million tonnes per annum of LNG.
Tellurian stands ready to make a final investment decision and begin construction in the first half, with the first LNG expected in 2023.
In its initial trading operations, Tellurian generated $5.9 million in revenue from LNG marketing and around $4.4M from natural gas sales.
It also received a $50 million investment from US energy and LNG engineering company Bechtel, which will organise the building of the plant.
“The company advanced the sale of LNG and Driftwood Holdings’ partnership interests, with approximately 35 customer-partners conducting due diligence,” said Tellurian.
Among other highlights it signed two accords, one with commodities firm Vitol for the supply of 1.5 MTPA of LNG for 15 years and a second with Petronet LNG of India for equity investment in the Driftwood project.
Tellurian additionally closed two open seasons on proposed pipelines, the Permian Global Access Pipeline and the Haynesville Global Access Pipeline, and received non-binding indications of interest for both projects in excess of available capacity.
“Tellurian distinguished itself in the market through our innovative equity interest investment strategy, and by introducing a new pricing benchmark for LNG agreements,” said President and Chief Executive Meg Gentle.
The CEO was referring to pricing being offered to customers on the Platts Japan Korea Marker (JKM) instead of the US benchmark Henry Hub price.
“We recently received our final Environmental Impact Statement for Driftwood LNG and look forward to receiving our Federal Energy Regulatory Commission order to proceed,” added Gentle.
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Vitol LNG growth
March 26 (LNGJ) – Vitol Group, the Geneva, Switzerland-based global commodities and energy trader, said the liquefied natural gas market was evolving as anticipated and the firm’s trading volumes grew during 2017 to 7.4 million tonnes of LNG. “Vitol continues to perform solidly,” said Chairman Ian Taylor. “Overall volumes held steady at just over 7 million barrels per day and turnover rose to $181 billion on the back of an increase in the average oil price over the course of the year,” added the Chairman. “Challenging market conditions required a constant focus on careful risk and margin management, though strong demand growth was supportive of volumes and the performance of our investment portfolio,” he said.
