An LNG facility is one of the largest and most complex industrial projects in the energy sector. A greenfield export plant can involve tens of billions of dollars of capital expenditure, a full decade from discovery to first cargo, and contractual relationships that span two or three more decades. This page walks through how such projects come together and summarises the headline projects shaping global supply.
How an LNG export project is built
Most large liquefaction projects follow a recognisable sequence:
- Resource assessment. A developer secures access to reserves — an offshore gas field, a group of onshore tight-gas basins, or a coal-bed methane area — of sufficient size and quality to justify decades of production.
- Feed-gas aggregation. Gas is purchased from upstream producers or produced directly by the integrated operator. Multi-decade contracts align upstream supply with the expected lifetime of the liquefaction plant.
- Concept selection and FEED. Front-end engineering and design studies establish the technology (single-train or multi-train, modular or stick-built, electric or gas-driven compression) and produce cost estimates that support financing.
- Offtake agreements. The developer signs long-term sale and purchase agreements (SPAs) — typically 15 to 20 years — with utilities, trading houses, and state-owned buyers. These SPAs underpin the debt financing of the plant.
- Final investment decision (FID). With permits, engineering, and offtake in place, the project reaches FID and construction begins.
- Construction and commissioning. Mega-trains can take three to five years to build, plus time for cooldown, commissioning cargoes, and ramp-up. In parallel, the developer places orders for LNG carriers with shipyards.
- First cargo and operations. The plant delivers its first cargo and gradually reaches nameplate capacity. The operating life runs to 20–30+ years, often extended with debottlenecking and retrofits.
How import projects are built
Import terminals — whether onshore regasification plants or floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs) — follow a simpler pattern:
- Onshore terminals resemble other large coastal industrial projects: site selection, marine works, tank construction, vapourisers, send-out pipelines, and pipeline interconnection to the national grid.
- FSRUs are chartered ships with on-board regasification. They can be deployed in under a year from decision to first send-out, which is why several emerging import markets have chosen FSRUs to enter the LNG market quickly.
See Regasification for the underlying equipment and the global terminals page for deployment patterns.
Major projects by region
United States Gulf Coast and east coast
The United States hosts the largest single concentration of LNG export capacity in the world. Facilities along the Louisiana and Texas coast — including Sabine Pass, Cameron, Freeport, Corpus Christi, Calcasieu Pass, Plaquemines, and Golden Pass — draw feed gas from the broader U.S. pipeline network and supply buyers in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Project development benefits from mature pipeline infrastructure and abundant shale gas; see USA LNG for the full inventory.
Qatar
Qatar's North Field expansion — delivered through the North Field East, South, and West projects — is the largest single addition of LNG capacity in the world this decade. Output flows from the giant North Field through the Ras Laffan industrial city complex. See Qatar LNG for the expansion phases and existing trains.
Australia
Australia operates a geographically spread set of facilities including Gorgon, Wheatstone, Ichthys, Prelude FLNG, and Queensland's coal-bed-methane-to-LNG projects (QCLNG and GLNG). The country's LNG sector serves Asian buyers primarily, and several existing facilities include carbon capture components.
Russia, Africa, and emerging exporters
Russia's Yamal LNG and Sakhalin-2 operate in very different climatic and logistical environments. Africa hosts Nigeria's NLNG, Algeria's Arzew and Skikda complexes, Egypt's Idku and Damietta, and emerging Mozambique projects including Coral Sul FLNG. Canada's first west-coast export facility, LNG Canada, brings a new Pacific supply point to the Asian market.
Import-side mega-projects
Large import terminals are particularly concentrated in Japan, South Korea, China, India, and increasingly across Europe, where FSRU deployment accelerated sharply in the mid-2020s. See country profiles for individual markets.
What determines whether a project proceeds
- Offtake. Sufficient long-term SPAs to cover most of the plant's output. Without this, lenders will not finance construction.
- Cost competitiveness. A project's liquefaction fee must be low enough to survive periods of low spot prices without defaulting.
- Permits and social licence. Particularly for onshore U.S. projects and for facilities with significant environmental footprints.
- Access to feed gas. Either via ownership of upstream reserves or long-term supply agreements that match the plant's life.
- Carbon intensity. Increasingly, buyers and lenders ask about the carbon intensity of the cargo as part of their own reporting obligations; integrated CCS or renewable-powered electrification can be part of the answer. See Carbon capture at LNG plants.
Why projects slip
Large LNG projects frequently slip by one to two years relative to initial schedules, and cost overruns are common. Recurring causes include labour-market bottlenecks in specialised trades (cryogenic pipefitters and welders), supply-chain disruptions for large forgings and compressors, weather delays at remote construction sites, environmental or judicial challenges, and the sheer complexity of commissioning systems that must work reliably at −162 °C. Buyers and lenders price this risk into the deal structure.