(Bloomberg) — Tellurian Inc. will seek equity partners to help finance a $13 billion liquefied natural gas project after abandoning plans to sell bonds to kickstart the development.
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The aborted bond sale puts the planned 2026 startup of Tellurian’s Driftwood LNG complex in Louisiana in jeopardy, Tellurian Co-Founder and Chairman Charif Souki said in a video posted on YouTube a day after cancelling the $1 billion bond deal.
The company, which was criticized by an investor last week for diluting shareholders through multiple equity issuances, plans to raise money from “strategic” equity partners, Souki said. Tellurian has sold stock 10 times since its inception six years ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The shares plunged 24% during regular US trading hours on Tuesday and tumbled another 16% after the close. The stock was down 9.6% at 6:23 p.m. in New York.
“The money is most likely to come from a potential strategic partner, because this is where the money is today,” Souki said. Potential investors “have all indicated that they would like to participate in an American LNG project because the US will be caught out to provide a disproportionate amount of the natural gas required for the rest of the world.”
Souki, who has been trying to line up financing for Driftwood since shortly after his 2015 ouster from Cheniere Energy Inc., also must contend with growing aversion to risk among investors as central banks step up anti-inflation measures that are making money more expensive to borrow.
“The debt market have made it very difficult to do a debt deal today and we will never put in jeopardy the balance sheet of Tellurian to try to accelerate the process by taking disproportionate risks,” Souki said.
(Updates stock-price decline in fourth paragraph. A previous version of this story corrected Souki’s job title.)
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