REM: TotalEnergies, Sempra to co-develop renewables projects in North America

TotalEnergies and Sempra have agreed to co-develop several onshore and offshore renewable energy projects in North America. TotalEnergies is the French oil and gas supermajor. Sempra is an American energy infrastructure company.

One memorandum of understanding (MoU) includes Sempra’s potential acquisition of 30% of TotalEnergies’ equity interest in an offshore wind project off the coast of California. An auction in California, overseen by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), will be held in Q4 2022.

The memo also covers TotalEnergies’ potential acquisition of 30% of Sempra’s equity interest in some solar projects under development along the Mexico-US border.

Further, the two companies will do-develop the Vista Pacífico LNG project, planned to be a mid-scale facility on Mexico’s west coast, a location that TotalEnergies says is well-situated for exporting to high-demand markets such as Asia and South America.

Sempra has signed a non-binding agreement with the Comisión Federal de Electricidad, Mexico’s state-owned electric company, for the potential joint development of the LNG project. The MoU signed with Sempra allows TotalEnergies to offtake one-third of the project’s future LNG production, and to become a shareholder in the project with a minimum stake of 16.6%.

“We are pleased to further strengthen our partnership with Sempra in North America in LNG and to extend it to renewables. Over the past years, TotalEnergies has become the leading exporter of US LNG and has built up a pipeline of 4 GW of solar projects and 3 GW of offshore wind projects currently under development in the US,” said Patrick Pouyanné, chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies.

“This new step in our collaboration allows us to go further in our ambition to offer our customers sustainable, affordable and reliable energy, in line with our transformation into a global multi-energy company,” he said.

TotalEnergies and Sempra are already partners in Cameron LNG, a 12mn tonne per year LNG export facility operating in Hackberry, Louisiana, and in ECA LNG, an approximately 3mn tpy liquefaction facility under construction in Baja California, Mexico.