NextDecade’s Bet on Rio Grande

NextDecade’s Longshot Bet on Rio Grande LNG Is Finally Paying Off
By Jordan Blum | Fortune |

NextDecade, the once-dismissed developer now on the verge of becoming Texas’s top gas exporter from its 1,000-acre Rio Grande LNG complex on the Brownsville Ship Channel. First production is slated for early next year, ahead of schedule, with the three-train first phase due by early 2029 and ten trains planned through 2036.

CEO Matt Schatzman argues the Iran war and Qatari supply disruption only sharpen a business case that already stood on its own, calling USLNG flexible and “a relatively inexpensive insurance policy” for buyers who can take cargoes anywhere. FERC’s early-April approval of a round-the-clock construction schedule with Bechtel underscores the urgency.

The piece doubles as a tribute to founder Kathleen Eisbrenner, who launched NextDecade in 2010 on a contrarian conviction that Permian gas would flood the region and that Brownsville’s deepwater access made it the cheapest path to the water. She was, Schatzman concedes, “100% right.” Eisbrenner died in 2019, before seeing the project she envisioned come to life.

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