U.S. natural gas exporters literally answer Asia’s calls for ‘help’ from the Iran war, but aid can’t come overnight

With Qatar’s liquefied natural gas shipments taken offline from the Iran war, Houston-based Cheniere Energy has become the world’s leading LNG exporter and CEO Jack Fusco said he is literally answering phone calls of “Help!” from Asia as a potential supply crisis begins to unfold.

“We’re going to try to get as many molecules as we can to those countries in Asia that really need it. But it’s a 28-day journey from the Gulf Coast to anywhere in Asia, so it’s not going to happen overnight,” Fusco said at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston.

Cheniere is planning to start bringing on production for export cargoes from its newest LNG facility—known as a “train” in industry lingo—in Corpus Christi, Texas by the end of this week, Fusco said. Natural gas must be liquefied through the LNG trains to be safely exported over water. Two more Corpus trains are slated to come online later this year. Cheniere (No. 275 on the Fortune 500) is even looking at potential maintenance delays to keep production running at full capacity for longer, he said.

“We are trying to do whatever we can. We’re looking at our maintenance schedules really hard,” Fusco said. “But, at the end of the day, we have to be safe, and we have to be reliable. We don’t want to sacrifice anything to get that last drop out.”

The last waterborne LNG shipments from Qatar to Asia that were shipped before the war began were recently delivered, so the physical supply shortages of natural gas have not yet begun, although many Asian nations have implemented conservation efforts, including mandating work from home........

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