Woodside Energy has signed a twenty year agreement to supply QatarEnergy with up to three million tonnes a year of liquefied natural gas from its Louisiana LNG project in the United States. The seller announced the agreement on 29 October 2026 in a filing to the Australian Securities Exchange.
The Australian producer is the seller, supplying through its Louisiana investment vehicle from its share of holding company volumes, and the Qatari state energy company is the buyer. Deliveries will be made on a free on board basis. Supply begins at the start up of the second Louisiana LNG train and rises to the full volume at the start up of the third. No calendar date is attached to either milestone and no price or pricing formula was disclosed.
Louisiana LNG is under construction near Lake Charles. The foundation project comprises three trains with combined capacity of 16.5 million tonnes a year, and first cargoes are targeted for 2029. The operator did not state its equity share in the announcement.
The commercial significance runs in an unfamiliar direction. The buyer is the largest single force in global liquefied natural gas supply, and seeing it sign as a long term buyer of American volumes says something about how the trading side of that business now works. Portfolio players increasingly buy as well as sell, using contracted third party volumes to serve customers in markets where their own production is poorly placed to deliver. A twenty year commitment of this size is a position in the United States export market taken through a contract rather than through equity in a plant.
For the seller the calculation is simpler and more pressing. Louisiana LNG is a capital intensive project still years from first cargo, and the thing that de risks it is contracted offtake from counterparties whose credit is beyond question. This agreement follows an earlier supply deal with Uniper, and the two together cover a material portion of the project output. The careful wording of the volume matters here: the agreement is for up to three million tonnes a year, reached only when the third train runs, and a good deal of secondary coverage has flattened that into a firm commitment the filing does not make.
Liz Westcott, Chief Executive and Managing Director of the producer, said the agreement brings together a competitive American project with the Qatari buyer as a customer and described it as a strong vote of confidence in Louisiana LNG. She said the contracts together provide sustained revenue certainty for a material portion of production.
