Australia’s Woodside Energy Group said it signed a revised turnkey EPC contract with contractor giant Bechtel to develop the Louisiana LNG liquefied natural gas project near Lake Charles, La. The notice to proceed, announced Dec. 4, comes several weeks after the Perth-based oil and gas company said it had acquired the project’s original developer Tellurian Inc. for $1.2 billion.
Woodland aims to sell a 50% stake in the production plant, which has a total permitted LNG capacity of 27.6 million tonnes of LNG per year and had been called Driftwood LNG.
The EPC contract will cover the development of the base of the project’s three production trains, with a capacity of 16.5 million tany, 11 million tany in Phase 1 and 5.5 million tany in Phase 2. tany Woodside said a final investment decision would be made in the first quarter of 2025.
Bechtel has been working on the Gulf Coast site in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, since 2022 on what ENR reported at the time would be an estimated $25 billion complex to be built under a fixed-price contract of 15.5 billion dollars. Revised contract terms were not announced and ENR could not yet confirm them through the release of the weather or a statement from a Woodside spokesman to Reuters that the project is now a $27 billion complex for the two phases, which equates to a cost of $900 to $960 per ton.
Woodside said construction on all the balls has been completed, and CEO Meg O’Neill previously stated in announcing the Tellurian purchase that “civil work on the site is well advanced.”
The project received 10-year construction approval in 2019 from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, noting in a media comment that the project has all the necessary permits, but has not “provided guidance on the date of completion of the project”.
“Louisiana LNG is positioned to provide LNG to the growing global market and … we continue to keep pace,” O’Neill said. “Within a short period of time, we have completed the procurement and secured competitive revised EPC pricing covering all three trains and opened the data room with strong interest from potential project partners.”
O’Neill called the LNG complex “an advantaged project that is fully permitted and has Bechtel as the EPC contractor. The competitive pricing and schedule certainty we have now secured increases this advantage in the current uncertain market environment for competing projects”.
Woodside has been in talks with buyers and potential investors for the project, but did not name a company, with announcements “with the final investment decision at the latest,” O’Neill told Reuters. “There are some inflationary pressures, both in the supply chain and in the labor market,” he said.
The project also faces legal action, filed in 2022, from environmental groups challenging some of its federal and state clean air and clean water approvals. Stock status could not be confirmed at time of publication.
