With solid government support, security, fiscal stability and relatively low labor costs, the U.S. Gulf Coast is uniquely situated to benefit from global demand for LNG, Vivek Chandra, CEO of Texas LNG LLC, said during Hart Energy’s recent North American LNG Exports conference in Houston.

The Houston-based company, which Chandra joked consisted largely of a few industry veterans and a credit card, has a 110-acre site at the Port of Brownsville’s deepwater ship channel with intended capacity of 2 million tonnes per annum of natural gas. Texas LNG plans to derive its gas from currently flared and vented supplies, offering a potential environmental and economic benefit to the region, which is currently in attainment with federal regulations.

“Fortunately, we are in a situation where, for the first time in our history, we can actually foresee doing an LNG project like this, where we can be disconnected from the gas reserves … because in the old days, you had to actually own the resource to develop the LNG projects, and only the big guys could go out and find a 5 Tcf [trillion cubic foot] gas field in the middle of Africa,” Chandra said. “So there really wasn’t an opportunity for small entrepreneurs like ourselves. I think they took full advantage of that situation. They made a lot of money for 30 or 40 years, but more importantly, they got fat and lazy like all oligarchies do. They basically let the cost get out of hand.”

Instead, Texas LNG has 85 engineers designing a modular system in South Korea that the company will then ship to Brownsville, ground the barge and have it function as a non-floating LNG facility, he said.

“I call it floating LNG without the ‘f’,” Chandra said. It’s all part of a cost-savings plan that Chandra said would be transparent and efficient for his customers.

“There are now 40 countries in the world that export LNG. There [is] 250 million tonnes of LNG capacity, another 200, 300 more potential. The days of the secured supply don’t hold. The customer is going to base its decision on whether you are credible, and what your price is going to be,” he said. “That’s the name of the game.”

But before the company told the world about its project, Texas LNG wanted to make sure it was feasible, he said. The company intends to spend $1.3 billion on capex for the project, but even that is relatively uncertain, he said, noting that the industry can change quickly.

Texas LNG will begin the permitting process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the next two months.