LNG leader reaches milestone
Souki takes exporting company Tellurian public as reverse merger is completed
Cheniere Energy founder Charif Souki has successfully taken his new company public on Nasdaq with the stock ticker “TELL” for Houston-based Tellurian.
Souki was ousted from liquefied natural gas export pioneer Cheniere just more than a year ago, and he founded Tellurian as a new LNG competitor. Tellurian went public through a reverse takeover completed Friday with the now-defunct Magellan Petroleum Corp. of Denver, which used to trade as “MPET.”
Tellurian stock lost 18 cents Friday to close at $14.03 a share.
Tellurian is developing the $12 billion Driftwood LNG project south of Lake Charles, La., as part of the next wave of LNG export projects. The goal is to bring it online in 2022 with the expectation that global demand growth by then will have wiped away the anticipated glut of LNG in the coming years.
Tellurian chief executive Meg Gentle, whom Souki, the chairman, poached from Cheniere, said her company’s next milestone will be filing its permit application for Driftwood LNG with the Federal Energy Regula-
tory Commission.
Tellurian is betting on strong demand for LNG over the long-term as natural gas becomes the preferred fossil fuel in a world increasingly concerned about climate change.
The company’s partners are, too. Paris-based Total last year agreed to buy a 23 percent stake in Tellurian. In November, General Electric’s oil and gas division, which is combining with Houston-based Baker Hughes, agreed to a smaller stake in Tellurian for $25 million.
Souki originally created Cheniere to import LNG, but the shale gas boom a decade ago reversed those plans. Cheniere’s timing made it a Wall Street darling, and Souki at one point became the nation’s highest-paid energy executive. Cheniere became the nation’s first LNG exporter in early 2016.
But that came shortly after Souki was forced out of that company. As the market weakened, activist investors like Carl Icahn grew weary of Souki’s greater ambitions to keep expanding and pushed for the change.
Souki’s ouster coincided with Martin Houston, the former chief operating officer of BG Group, moving to Houston to create Parallax Energy, another LNG company. Houston left BG shortly before the natural gas exploration and production company was acquired by Royal Dutch Shell.
Souki teamed up with Houston, who is vice chairman of Tellurian. Driftwood LNG is a variation on projects Souki and Parallax had pursued before they formed Tellurian.