President Trump announced on Tuesday, February 17, a $550 billion trade agreement between the United States and Japan, with roughly $36 billion allocated to three major U.S. oil, gas, and critical mineral projects, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The first deal is a $33 billion investment in SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy’s ‘Portsmouth Powered Land Project.’ This project is a proposed 9.2 GW gas-fired power complex in Ohio, capable of producing roughly the output of nine nuclear reactors. A facility of that scale could require approximately 1.5 to 2 Bcf/d of natural gas, depending on efficiency and utilization rates, placing it in the same range as the feedgas demand of a large LNG export complex.
The second deal includes a $2.1 billion investment in Sentinel Midstream’s Texas GulfLink deepwater crude export facility. Located 26.6 nautical miles off the coast of Brazoria County, Texas, this terminal is designed to load Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) directly offshore, adding to the U.S.’s structural export capacity.
