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Golden Pass LNG exported the first liquefied gas shipment in its history, bringing the United States one step closer to dominating the global LNG market that Qatar and Australia still contest
The terminal is located in Sabine Pass, Texas, next to the first major U.S. LNG export complex — Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG, which opened the American market to liquefied gas in 2016. QatarEnergy holds 70% of Golden Pass and ExxonMobil the remaining 30%. The two partners jointly invested $10 billion to build three liquefaction trains with a total capacity of 16 million tons per year of LNG.
The first shipment left Train 1 in April 2026, making Golden Pass the ninth U.S. LNG export terminal. Timing matters: the U.S. has already surpassed Qatar as the world’s largest LNG exporter in the past two years, and Golden Pass further extends that margin. The country currently exports more than 150 billion cubic meters of gas per year in liquefied form, supplying Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
For Qatar, the project represents a diversification strategy that goes beyond just selling gas: by becoming a majority partner in a U.S. terminal, QatarEnergy ensures permanent access to the U.S. export market and reduces its exclusive dependence on Ras Laffan facilities in the Persian Gulf. The geopolitics of gas is increasingly linked to the location of export terminals, not just the resource’s origin.
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Golden Pass was originally built as an LNG import terminal — the logic in the 2000s was that the U.S. would need to import gas from South America and the Middle East to meet growing domestic demand. The shale revolution turned this calculation upside down: fracking transformed the U.S. from the largest importer to the largest exporter of LNG in less than fifteen years. Golden Pass was converted from a regasification terminal to a liquefaction terminal, an investment that took nearly a decade of planning and construction.
The global LNG market is undergoing a phase of intense expansion. Besides Golden Pass, other American terminals like Rio Grande LNG and Texas LNG are under construction, with additional capacity of tens of millions of tons per year expected to come online before 2030. Europe, which previously relied almost entirely on Russian gas via pipeline, now buys American and Qatari LNG to replace this energy, and Asian demand from Japan, Korea, and China continues to grow.
The profitability of Golden Pass depends on the differential between the price of natural gas in the U.S. — still relatively cheap due to the shale surplus — and the selling price of LNG in Asian and European markets, which historically pay more. When this differential is large, export terminals generate high margins. When the global LNG price drops — as it did in 2020 — the economic logic of the project becomes tighter.
With nine terminals operating and more in the pipeline, the U.S. consolidates a position that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago: dominant exporters of liquefied gas to all continents. U.S. LNG capacity has doubled since 2019 and is expected to double again by 2030 if all approved projects come to fruition.
How long do you think the U.S. will maintain its leadership in the LNG market before Qatar regains the top spot? Leave your opinion in the comments.
