Deliveries of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from US companies will increase by tens of millions of tons over the next three years. American companies approve investment decisions that will allow them to increase their liquefaction capacity, Kommersant writes.

The largest operator of LNG capacity in the US, Cheniere Energy, has agreed to increase LNG output at the Corpus Christi plant from 15 million tons to 25 million. Deliveries of new fuel will go to the market at the end of 2025.

After the waves of 2016-2017 and 2020-2022, manufacturers began to prepare for the third expansion into the global market. Earlier in May, Venture Global made an investment decision on the first phase of the Plaquemines LNG project, which will have a capacity of 12 million tons. As independent expert Alexander Sobko notes, it is highly likely that by the end of the year a decision will be made on the second phase of a slightly lower capacity, because enough contracts have already been collected. Tellurian continues to collect applications for an investment decision on Driftwood LNG.

The need for LNG in the world has grown sharply after Europe, against the backdrop of the introduction of Russian troops into Ukraine, decided to abandon gas from Russia. The United States pledged to deliver an additional 15 billion cubic meters of gas across the ocean this year and 50 billion cubic meters each in the coming years.

This plan is close to completion. In five months, exports reached 25 billion cubic meters against 10.2 billion in the same period last year. Difficulties arise with the infrastructure within the EU, where there is not enough regasification capacity.

To address this issue, German energy company RWE AG, on behalf of the German government, chartered two floating units (FSRUs) for LNG regasification in May. They will allow delivering up to 14 billion cubic meters of gas to the market after regasification.

However, experts do not exclude that the overall growth in natural gas consumption in the world will reduce the amount of free LNG volumes that could be sent to the European market.