Australia’s Woodside Energy and Saudi Aramco have signed a non-binding agreement to explore cooperation, which may include Aramco buying a stake in Woodside’s Louisiana LNG project.
Woodside said the deal could involve Aramco acquiring equity and securing LNG offtake from the project.
Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill called the agreement a sign of strong investor interest in Louisiana LNG. This follows a recent deal with Stonepeak, which bought a 40% stake in the project’s infrastructure holding company.
Woodside made the final investment decision on the $17.5 billion facility in April. The plant will have three liquefaction trains with a total capacity of 16.5 million tons per year. It aims to start production by 2029.
The project will raise Woodside’s total LNG capacity to 24 million tons annually by the next decade. Woodside also holds permits to add two more trains, which would increase capacity to 27.6 million tons per year.
Woodside acquired the former Driftwood LNG project last year through its $1.2 billion purchase of Tellurian. At the time, O’Neill said the deal gave Woodside a scalable U.S. LNG development alongside its existing 10 million tons per year of LNG equity in Australia.
This year, Woodside sought partners to sell up to 50% ownership in the project. It has already sold 40% to Stonepeak, which will fund $5.7 billion of the project’s capital expenditure in 2025 and 2026.
Woodside aims to sell another 20-30% stake in the project. The company expects the Louisiana LNG facility to generate about $2 billion in net operating cash income annually starting in the 2030s.
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