ST LNG has US approval for an $8.2 billion Texas gas export port, and its chief executive says no buyer has signed

What the project is

ST LNG is a privately owned company based in Rockville, Maryland. It wants to build a port 10.4 miles off the coast of Matagorda, Texas. The port would chill natural gas into a liquid, called liquefied natural gas or LNG, so ships can carry it to buyers abroad.

It would be the company's first LNG project. Chief executive Sharad Tak has built businesses in information technology, paper products, broadcasting, power generation and luxury hotels, Reuters reports.

The full design has four liquefaction systems of 2.1 million metric tons a year each, or 8.4 million tons in all. Reuters puts that at about 8% of US capacity. The Transportation Department says the project would expand American export capacity by 7 to 9%. The cost is $8.2 billion.

The US is already the world's largest LNG exporter, Reuters says, with more than 100 million tons a year of capacity and close to another 100 million under construction.

What the government approved

On October 28th, 2026, the Maritime Administration approved ST LNG's license application. The agency licenses deepwater ports and sits inside the Transportation Department. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the decision in Houston.

The department called it the fastest deepwater port license review in more than two decades. It says the final environmental impact statement took 410 days, nearly 3.7 years faster than the historical average. That figure covers the environmental review, not the license.

Approval is not the license itself. Reuters reports that ST LNG will receive its license once it complies with all federal and state requirements. A separate Energy Department approval covers exports. ST LNG has long-term authority to ship to countries with free-trade agreements with the US. It says it expects approval soon to export to countries without them.

What is still missing

ST LNG has no long-term commitments from buyers, Tak told Reuters on October 29th. He said it is close to signing an integrated energy company in India as its first buyer, and is in talks with European and Asian companies. That is a statement of intent, not a contract.

Tak said the company will approve the project once it has customer commitments of at least 2 million tons a year. President Alap Shah said long-term sales agreements would let the first unit go ahead. Other units would follow at six-month intervals as more customers sign.

The company plans to pay with debt and equity. Tak said it has spoken with four to six banks. "The banks are very eager, and they are willing to move in the next three to four months," he said.

ST LNG aims to make a final investment decision, the formal commitment of construction money, by mid- to late 2027. The Transportation Department expects construction to begin in 2027 and the port to come online in 2029. Shah told Reuters commercial operations would begin by mid-2030, which is later than the department's date.

Why buyers are shopping now

The US and Israel launched a war on Iran on February 28th. Iran responded by effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which a fifth of the world's oil and LNG shipments pass, Reuters reports.

QatarEnergy, the Qatari state energy company, supplies around a fifth of global LNG exports. It halted production in early March after Iranian missile attacks. The strikes damaged two of its 14 LNG production units, with combined capacity of 12.8 million tons a year. Its chief executive says repairs will take about three years.

QatarEnergy is now buying US gas on long contracts, as Figure 1 shows. On October 29th it signed a 20-year agreement for 3 million tons a year from Woodside's US plants. It had earlier signed two agreements with Cheniere Energy for up to 4 million tons a year through 2054. Cheniere deliveries are not expected to begin until 2031.

That puts ST LNG in competition with sellers that already operate. Tak says the war helps his project. "America seems to be a more stable supplier than any other country," he told Reuters.

Europe has little room for error. Gas Infrastructure Europe, the trade body for the continent's gas network operators, said EU storage was 72% full on October 1st, about 11% below a year earlier. Even on the department's schedule, the port would not open until 2029.

What to watch

Four documents would show whether the approval turns into a port. The first is a Department of Energy order on exports to countries without free-trade agreements. The second is a signed long-term sales agreement with a buyer. The third is the license itself, which will appear in docket MARAD-2025-0096. The fourth is a final investment decision.