GALLIANO, LA (AP) — Officials are planning an $800 million liquefied natural gas plant and export terminal at Port Fourchon.
The Greater Lafourche Port Commission and one of the port's tenants, Energy World USA, announced the proposed development Tuesday in a news release.
The proposed Galliano facility eventually would produce up to 2 million tons of LNG per year for export, officials said. It would also operate a separate plant to provide LNG to fuel offshore supply vessels operating in the Gulf of Mexico.
"While it is still very early in the planning and regulatory process, we are excited to be able to tell the community and our tenants about this potential opportunity to continue to keep Port Fourchon at the very cutting edge of the oil-and-gas services industry," said Chett Chiasson, the port's executive director.
The announcement comes as the Houma-Thibodaux area continues to reel from an oil bust that has stripped an estimated 12,000 jobs from the local economy since mid-2014, The Courier’s Keith Magill reported.
Job estimates and a project timeline have not been finalized, but Chiasson estimated a few hundred construction jobs would be created, as well as a few dozen permanent jobs once the project is completed.
Energy World USA is part of the Energy World International Ltd., which has a controlling interest in the Australian public company Energy World Corp.
The LNG produced at Port Fourchon will initially be exported to the company's own gas-fired power plants across the Asia-Pacific region and also be sold in the U.S. markets for marine use, officials said.
