Souki still refused when I met him in early February at Tellurian’s office in downtown Houston. The company has a small space in a building owned by the oil exploration company TotalEnergies, and from the meeting room upstairs, Souki and I can look out and see the far reaches of the City Oil complex. Texas, where oil storage tanks and refineries are located. spits out bright orange flames. Despite all the obstacles Tellurian was facing, Souki had an unwelcome air about him and spoke with the blasphemous confidence one might expect from a man accustomed to raise billions of dollars for long-term projects. He was wearing one of his trademark two-piece suits, along with a pink tie, and when he talked he sometimes took a ballpoint pen that could be pulled out of his jacket and fidgeting with its press.
I wonder why Souki is so determined to get back into the LNG business. After all, he has made a fortune, and the industry he started is reaching maturity. Tellurian is still several years and billions of dollars away from being able to profit from it again. Why isn’t he at home in Aspen?
How the supply chain crisis unfolded
The pandemic has sparked the problem. Complex and interconnected global supply chains are in flux. Much of the crisis can stemming from the outbreak of Covid-19, which caused an economic downturn, mass layoffs, and production shutdowns. Here’s what happened next:
“The world is calling for natural gas,” he said, “and I want to be able to supply natural gas as soon as possible.” There was an energy shortage in Europe during the winter, due to the rapid outbreak of the pandemic and people in the UK worried about paying their gas bills – how could he not want to supply them? give them more fuel? Moreover, he said, “emerging countries will add two billion people, and their living standards will always improve. They won’t say, ‘I don’t want to live like you.’
As Souki sees it, the short-term need to power the world is greater than the long-term need to impact carbon emissions. The world may be facing energy and climate crises, he said, “but one crisis will happen this month, and another will happen in 40 years.” He added: “If you say to someone, ‘You’re running out of electricity this month,’ and then you tell that person about what’s going to happen in 40 years, they’ll tell you, ‘I What do you care about 40 years from now? ‘”
Two weeks later, Russia invaded Ukraine. The booming US LNG industry has rushed in to fill the void left by Russian gas, shifting its focus from Asia to Europe. Shipments that had left US export facilities to Japan or China changed course and headed for France and the Netherlands, many times the price they could have had just days before. A few weeks after the invasion began, the United States and the European Commission announced a long-term agreement to help Europe free itself from Russian gas, with American producers promising to supply at least one-third of what Russia once supplied to the continent. Bulgaria, Germany and Greece are all racing to build new import terminals so they can receive American gas before winter, as Russia cuts off gas supplies from one country to another; Germany eventually switched to working on old coal plants. Just a few months earlier, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, it was these European governments that had confirmed their intention to abandon fossil fuels, but now they must set aside their ambitions. there.
I met Souki again in April in New York, at the downtown office of a media strategy firm. Souki is taking advantage of the energy market turmoil to once again make his moral case for sending gas around the globe: He’s stopping in New York to talk to potential investors. and develop a new communications strategy for Tellurian before he heads down to Washington to meet with policymakers and legislators. We gathered together at a conference table in the lobby.
