Cheniere Energy said on 22 October that its subsidiaries, Sabine Pass Liquefaction and Corpus Christi Liquefaction, had entered into two long-term LNG sale and purchase agreements with QatarEnergy. The company said the combined contracted volume is up to 4 million tonnes per annum (mtpa), with each subsidiary supplying 2 mtpa. Deliveries are expected to begin in the early 2030s and continue through the end of 2054. These are contracts for future supply; they do not mean the additional volumes are already being produced or delivered.

The agreements are on a free-on-board (FOB) basis. Cheniere said the purchase price will be indexed to the Henry Hub gas price plus a fixed fee. It also disclosed that 1 mtpa under the Sabine Pass agreement is conditional on a positive final investment decision for the first phase of its expansion. The headline volume is therefore the agreements’ stated total, with a quarter of it subject to the expansion decision.

Cheniere’s first expansion phase at Sabine Pass is expected to include a new liquefaction unit, Train 7, a boil-off gas reliquefaction unit and supporting infrastructure tied into the existing terminal. Cheniere estimates first-phase production capacity at more than 6 mtpa, including estimated debottlenecking opportunities. It puts the potential peak capacity of the wider expansion programme at about 20 mtpa. These are development estimates, not output from operating new trains. The company also said it signed a lump-sum, turnkey engineering, procurement and construction contract with Bechtel in May 2026 and issued a limited notice to proceed for early engineering and procurement.

The agreements give QatarEnergy long-term LNG purchase volumes from two separate Cheniere facilities on the US Gulf Coast. The public release sets out volume, delivery basis, price index and term, but does not say which customers or markets would receive the cargoes or how much would be delivered in any particular year. FOB defines the delivery basis at the loading terminal; subsequent shipping arrangements are not detailed in the public summary.

The key milestone to watch is the final investment decision for the first phase of the Sabine Pass expansion, because it determines whether the conditional 1 mtpa portion proceeds. Other unanswered questions include the expansion schedule, permitting and construction progress, and the actual start date of deliveries expected in the early 2030s. The public announcements disclose volumes, delivery basis and term, but not the full contracts, the fixed fee or all commercial flexibility provisions. The announced total should not be read as disclosure of every contractual term.