A request by the Golden Pass LNG Terminal developer to bring in more workers to build the Texas natural gas export facility is still pending after a year at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission amid concerns of delay.
FERC staff issued an environmental assessment on March 22 that concluded a Golden Pass plan to boost the peak workforce from 2,900 to 7,700 people per day would not cause significant harm to the environment (CP14-517). But the request still requires approval at a time when FERC is facing pressure over a recent permitting policy overhaul, which commissioners are scheduled to revisit on March 24.
Critics of the policy changes, including gas industry groups and Republican lawmakers, have argued that FERC's new approach will hinder the development of gas infrastructure, even as the White House looks to boost LNG supplies to Europe following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Golden Pass told FERC in its original February 2021 request, which also sought to increase traffic volumes and extend construction hours around the clock, that "construction progress would be severely hampered and successful execution of the project would not be feasible" without the regulator's approval for a larger workforce.
'They have been delayed'
The developer has maintained that the Golden Pass facility, which will be able to produce about 18.1 million tonnes of LNG per year, is slated to start operations in 2024.
"To date, these FERC delays have not impacted our in-service date, but let's just say the slack is gone from the system," Golden Pass spokesperson Renwick DeVille said in a March 22 email. "We have another FERC permitting challenge impacting our pipeline that is also only recently showing movement that has given us a high degree of concern."
The developer's affiliated pipeline company, Golden Pass Pipeline LLC, applied for an amendment in June 2021 that would add compression and new interconnects to its gas transportation system, supporting new upstream supply arrangements and storage to help balance swings in feedgas demand without increasing the capacity of the system. In March 22 comments to FERC, the developer complained of "unwarranted, extensive delays" and an "opaque approval process."
Some U.S. LNG industry executives with experience developing multibillion-dollar export facilities have raised concerns in recent weeks about the Golden Pass project suffering from regulatory delays when there is high demand for U.S. LNG.
"You have Golden Pass coming online, maybe in '24," Freeport LNG Development LP CEO Michael Smith told reporters March 9 during the CERAWeek by S&P Global energy conference in Houston. "They have been delayed because of the pandemic, and they are requesting a lot more people on their site to finish the facility, and they haven't gotten FERC approval for it. Eventually, I assume they will."
Smith and other gas industry executives who panned the new FERC policies at the conference argued that the lack of new LNG export capacity coming online in the next decade supported the need for building additional export projects.
FERC Chairman Richard Glick has defended the commission's policies as making its orders less vulnerable to legal challenges and supporting a faster approval process for LNG projects and other gas infrastructure.
The Golden Pass facility, which is backed by QatarEnergy and Exxon Mobil Corp., will increase peak U.S. natural gas export capacity to an estimated 16.3 Bcf/d, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
'Bureaucratic headaches'
No other large U.S. LNG export projects are scheduled to come online before Golden Pass. The seventh major U.S. LNG export facility, Venture Global LNG's Calcasieu Pass terminal in Louisiana, shipped its first cargo on March 1 and is continuing to ramp up production as additional trains come online. The other six LNG export facilities have been running at about full capacity for months, with most cargoes flowing to Europe.
Charif Souki, the Tellurian Inc. executive chairman, said FERC's handling of Golden Pass' request illustrated "bureaucratic headaches" that did not exist when he was developing the Sabine Pass LNG terminal in Louisiana during his time as CEO of Cheniere Energy Inc. Souki criticized FERC for seeking public comments about the Golden Pass request in a November 2021 notice that drew protests from environmental groups. FERC staff had expected to issue its environmental assessment by Feb. 7, paving the way for a commission decision by May 9.
"They have filed for a permit to increase the number of employees — that, when I was in Sabine Pass, was a matter of a week to get a response," Souki said. "Now FERC has decided to notice it, and it is going to take six months to get an answer to, 'Can I put 7,000 employees instead of 2,000 employees on the facility?' That is ridiculous."
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