Woodside fielding offers for LNG development stake

The Driftwood LNG facility in Louisiana had the capacity to export 27.6 million tonnes a year. Picture: Bloomberg

Woodside Energy is understood to have been inundated with offers from parties keen to buy a stake in its US Gulf Coast Driftwood LNG development opportunity, and sources are pointing to EIG as one of the most likely buyers.

EIG’s fund is 25 per cent owned by Saudi Aramco, which was the under bidder for the project bought by Woodside in July, but it could not gain the approvals.

Potential buyers other than EIG or Saudi Aramco could be Chesapeake, a Japanese customer, US-based Williams or even an infrastructure group like GIP which bought a 49 per cent interest in its Pluto Train 2 joint venture – a component of its Scarborough development in Western Australia – in 2021.

That deal resulted in GIP funding $US822m of its capital spending costs. Woodside announced its deal in July to buy Tellurian in a transaction worth $1.8bn.

The deal included Tellurian’s owned and operated US Gulf Coast Driftwood LNG development opportunity.

A transaction could be worth as much as $1bn, which would offset costs of the development for Woodside.

Tellurian’s Driftwood LNG facility in Louisiana had the capacity to export 27.6 million tonnes a year, almost three times Woodside’s output from its Australian projects, analysts said.