Glenfarne announces $500mn investment to support Texas LNG

Glenfarne Group said on July 13 that it had secured a $500mn investment, with the lead investors involved being investment funds and accounts managed by global investment firm HPS Investment Partners, a part of BlackRock. Glenfarne said the investment would be used to support the continued development of its Texas LNG project at the Port of Brownsville, including early construction work.

According to the announcement, the investment also represents one of the final steps required for Texas LNG ahead of a final investment decision (FID), which Glenfarne is targeting for later this year. This comes after the company issued a limited notice to proceed (LNTP) to Kiewit Energy Group, the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor for Texas LNG, on July 2.

According to an announcement issued at the time, the LNTP covers purchase orders for long-lead equipment, engineering activities for the EPC phase and geotechnical work required to prepare the Texas LNG terminal for full construction and FID.

Glenfarne achieved a further milestone at Texas LNG on July 3, when it announced that its global LNG marketing and trading business, Glenfarne Global Commodities (GGC), had executed a heads of agreement (HoA) with commodity trader BGN, for the supply of 1mn tonnes per year (tpy) of supply from Texas LNG. The HoA paves the way for the two companies to negotiate a definitive 20-year sale and purchase agreement (SPA).

Glenfarne previously announced in January that it had converted all of its previously announced HoAs relating to supply from Texas LNG to binding long-term offtake agreements. In April, the company subsequently expanded GGC to include 1.5mn tpy of supply from Texas LNG, as well as volumes from Alaska LNG that had yet to be determined at the time. The accompany described the addition of these volumes to GGC’s marketing portfolio as reflecting its conviction that the global LNG market would continue to be buoyed by “compelling long-term fundamentals, supported by the growth of LNG as a vital fuel to power generation, industries, and data centres, and driven by ongoing geopolitical tensions”.

Texas LNG will have a capacity of 4mn tpy. Glenfarne has said it is committed to developing the facility to be one of the cleanest, lowest-emitting LNG export plants globally through the use of electric motor drives.

“This latest investment milestone is evidence of the execution readiness of Texas LNG, as it enables a number of strategic initiatives for the project, including placement of purchase orders for certain critical equipment packages,” stated Texas LNG’s co-president, Vlad Bluzer, who is also a partner at Glenfarne, this week.