QatarEnergy has locked in a major new supply line of American natural gas, signing two long-term agreements with Cheniere to purchase up to 4 million tonnes per annum of liquefied natural gas from export terminals in Texas and Louisiana. The agreements run through 2054, arriving as Qatar's own LNG exports remain hobbled by regional shipping disruptions.
Two Deals, Two Gulf Coast Terminals
According to Qatar Tribune, the two sale and purchase agreements split the volume evenly, with Cheniere's Sabine Pass Liquefaction and Corpus Christi Liquefaction subsidiaries each supplying 2 million tonnes per annum on a free-on-board basis, as reported by BIC Magazine. Under that FOB structure, QatarEnergy takes responsibility for the cargo once it is loaded at the export terminal, and pricing is indexed to Henry Hub plus a fixed fee. One million tonnes per annum tied to the Sabine Pass agreement is contingent on a positive final investment decision for the first phase of the Sabine Pass Expansion Project, per the same outlet.
Dossier sources diverge slightly on when the gas will start flowing. Qatar Tribune reports deliveries are anticipated to begin in 2031 and continue through 2054, while BIC Magazine describes deliveries beginning in the early 2030s and running through the end of 2054. Either way, the agreements lock in decades of supply for QatarEnergy's portfolio.
Who Signed, and What They Said
The agreements were signed by Saad Sherida Al Kaabi, Qatar's Minister of State for Energy Affairs and QatarEnergy's President and CEO, along with Jack Fusco, Chairman, President and CEO of Cheniere Energy, according to Trend News Agency. Al Kaabi said the agreements marked an important milestone in QatarEnergy's LNG strategy, adding that the purchase will expand and diversify the company's global LNG portfolio and improve its ability to meet changing market requirements, Trend reported. The added volumes are expected to complement QatarEnergy's existing supplies, strengthen its supply and trading portfolio, and enhance its ability to serve customers worldwide, while Cheniere gains a long-term sales framework for the LNG produced at its U.S. export facilities, per the same report.
War Disruptions Reshape Qatar's Export Picture
The timing underscores why Doha is looking west for supply. QatarEnergy has been forced to dramatically reduce flows as shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains in turmoil, and the country's Ras Laffan facility was damaged during the war, according to Bloomberg. QatarEnergy restored LNG exports in September to about a third of prewar levels, Bloomberg reported as cited by Semafor, which also noted that at least 20 more shipments have passed through the Strait of Hormuz to other destinations since early September.
QatarEnergy has a broader strategy of diversifying its LNG procurement sources and maintaining a flexible supply portfolio, Trend reported, and this deal fits that pattern even as the company works to stabilize its own production.
Cheniere's Expanding Gulf Coast Footprint
Cheniere's two liquefaction complexes on the Gulf Coast give it the scale to absorb the new commitment. Sabine Pass in Louisiana has six fully operational liquefaction trains, each capable of producing approximately 5 million tonnes per annum, with trains brought online ahead of schedule and within budget, according to Trend. The facility carries roughly 30 million tonnes per annum of aggregate nominal production capacity and can draw natural gas from every supply source in the continental United States east of the Rocky Mountains, working with dozens of producers and infrastructure companies to move gas to the terminal.
Corpus Christi Liquefaction, located along the north shore of Corpus Christi Bay in San Patricio County, Texas, has 10 fully operational liquefaction trains and three containment tanks each holding 160,000 cubic meters of LNG storage capacity, per Trend. The site has two berths capable of receiving Q-Max carriers, the largest class of LNG ship, which measure 344.4 meters long and carry 266,000 cubic meters of cargo. Cheniere's investor relations team has described the combined Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi platform as having approximately 56 million tonnes per annum of operating production capacity, a figure released alongside the company's announcement of substantial completion for the Corpus Christi Liquefaction Stage 3 project in late August. Reuters has separately reported Cheniere's present capacity at 52 million tonnes per annum with another 8 million tonnes per annum under construction, while Stocktitan cited roughly 56 million tonnes per annum in operation plus about 5 million tonnes per annum under construction — figures that differ depending on the source.
More Growth on the Horizon
Cheniere is not standing still on expansion. The company signed its engineering, procurement and construction contract with Bechtel Energy for the first phase of the Sabine Pass Expansion Project in May 2026, according to Stocktitan. That expansion is expected to add up to roughly 20 million tonnes per annum of peak production capacity, pushing total Sabine Pass capacity past 50 million tonnes per annum, per BIC Magazine's reporting.
Cheniere has also applied to build a separate, 24 million-metric-ton-per-year LNG plant at its Corpus Christi site, which would add four new trains producing 6 million tonnes per annum apiece and raise the facility's eventual capacity to 49 million tonnes per annum, according to Reuters. The U.S. exported 111 million metric tonnes of LNG in 2025, per preliminary LSEG data cited by Reuters, and the Energy Information Administration has projected that the country's export capacity could nearly double by 2031 compared with December 2025, per the agency's own analysis. The QatarEnergy-Cheniere agreements add one more long-term buyer to that growing pipeline of American gas heading overseas.
