Only a few years ago, before the shale revolution, exploitable U.S. natural-gas reserves were thought to be on the decline, so LNG import facilities were developed at Sabine Pass and several other sites. These brownfield sites, says Bentek's Diaz, "offer the maritime infrastructure, storage tanks and pipelines in place" and present "a less risky proposition to risk-averse Asian buyers, compared to competing greenfield projects in Canada, Australia and other regions."

Diaz notes that buying from U.S. LNG exporters "allows Asian buyers not only to diversify their sources of supply but also to diversify their price structure, signing new commercial agreements with LNG prices linked to Henry Hub [the primary benchmark for North American natural-gas prices] compared with traditional oil-linked LNG contracts."

Work on the liquefaction trains and export terminals is proving to be a bonanza worth well over $25 billion for contractors with experience in large-scale industrial engineering-procurement-construction projects. Cheniere tapped Bechtel as the EPC contractor for both Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi.

EPC Project Pipeline

Work at Sabine Pass, begun in 2012, continues on schedule, with the first train expected to be in operation next year and trains Nos. 2, 3 and 4 to follow in 2016-17. Permits for trains Nos. 5 and 6 are pending.

The contractor has not broken ground at Corpus Christi, where final permit approvals are pending for three liquefaction trains. If granted, the first export shipments are expected in 2018-19. EPC contracts at both locations total, combined, $17.3 billion.

At the Cameron site, CB&I Inc. and Chiyoda International Corp. hold a $6-billion EPC contract; CB&I and Jacobs Industrial Inc. are teamed at Freeport's Quintana Island, Texas, regasification terminal project.

At Dominion's Cove Point project on the Chesapeake Bay, worth between $3.4 billion and $3.8 billion, the EPC contractor is a joint venture of IHI E&C and Kiewit Energy Co. The terminal's initial shipments, under 20-year contracts with customers in Japan and India, are expected to commence in 2017.

The LNG export projects planned for the Gulf Coast, in particular, will require a major reworking of the U.S. natural-gas pipeline network, which was originally designed primarily to move gas from the Gulf Coast to the Midwest and the Northeast.

Today, an increasing share of U.S. natural gas comes from the Marcellus-Utica region in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia; a significant portion of the gas produced now needs to be piped to LNG export facilities along the Gulf of Mexico.

That situation has led the midstream companies with major pipeline assets between the Marcellus-Utica region and the Gulf to add "bi-directionality" to their pipelines. In the winter, gas follows traditional patterns to supply the Northeast. However, the emerging export market is prompting pipeline owners and operators to rework and sometimes expand those lines to allow increasing amounts of gas to flow south and east to the export terminals.

For example, Columbia Pipeline Group has been developing several projects that, as a group, will increase its capacity to move Marcellus-Utica gas to the southwestern edge of its Columbia Gas Transmission system at Leach, Ky., and enable deliveries from there to Rayne, La., through a soon-to-be bi-directional Columbia Gulf Transmission pipeline.

Similarly, Spectra Energy is working on several projects to enable southbound gas deliveries on its Texas Eastern Transmission pipeline, and Kinder Morgan is adding bi-directionality to its Tennessee Gas Pipeline for the same reason. Gas pipelines to the Cove Point LNG terminal in Maryland also are being expanded to handle increased flows.