Long-Term Sales-and-Purchase Agreements Being Key for LNG Infrastructure Financing?

摘要

The financing of infrastructures is a major topic in recent energy policy debates. Project finance, as a specialized form of debt finance, thereby has become a well-established financing tool also in the LNG industry. In this vein, the firm has to be understood as a comprehensive set of interrelated contractual arrangements. Using the data on 26 LNG export and import projects, we argue that lenders will make their decision on how much to lend dependent on a project’s risk profile. Off-take agreements serve as a security for financial contracts. The future role of project finance in the LNG industry, however, is less clear. In the short term, the global financial crisis has reduced lending capacity; technological risks associating innovations might shy away lenders. In the longer term, the changing nature of sales-and-purchase agreements in the global LNG market may lead to doubts about their ability to serve as a security for financial contracts.