Communication between Driftwood LNG and residents in Southwest Louisiana has been sporadic at best in the months since the company announced plans to develop a liquefied natural gas production and export terminal south of Lake Charles.
The lapse in dialogue was evident this week when residents planning to attend the company’s Aug. 25 outreach meeting were notified the same day that the meeting had been rescheduled for Sept. 15 in the Kinder Community Center at 316 N. Eighth St.
The original date and location were reported by the American Press on Aug. 17 in an article detailing the company’s most recent filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Joi Lecznar, public affairs and communication representative for Tellurian Investments, owners of Driftwood LNG, said staff at Kinder City Hall had been contacted on Wednesday and were asked to put up fliers announcing the scheduling change.
Lecznar said the company plans to run ads in local news outlets to inform residents about the Sept. 15 meeting.
The open houses are a common practice for LNG companies like Driftwood. In the August FERC filing, company officials said four similar events had been held between July 18 and July 21 in Sulphur, Oberlin, Eunice and Lake Charles.
“A number of public comments and Project comment cards have been filed in the FERC docket since these open house meetings,” officials said in the document.
Jay Fear, a Welsh resident who planned to attend the event, said he is one of many who have trouble contacting the company for information about the project. Fear said he drove to the Kinder community center Wednesday in hopes of speaking with a Driftwood representative.
Fear said he eventually was able to speak on the phone with someone associated with the project. “I said, ‘Tell me about the meeting.’ They said it’s canceled. And they asked me how I found out about the meeting,” he said. “They seemed annoyed.”
Fear said his primary concern regarding the project deals with its environmental impact. He said he wanted to speak with someone who could explain the issues that may occur and potential solutions to solve them.
Driftwood was founded by former Cheniere Energy CEO Charif Souki. Souki spent 19 years with Cheniere before being ousted in December — a move one company official said would push “the company in a direction that differed greatly” from Souki’s planned path. Souki was the highest-paid public company CEO in the nation in 2013 with a salary of $142 million.
The Driftwood facility will consist of five plants to be used to export 26 million tons of LNG per year. Each plant will have one gas pretreatment unit and four liquefaction units. The project is expected to cost between $6 billion and $8 billion, according to company officials.
The LNG terminal will span an area of roughly 800 acres on the west side of the Calcasieu River about five miles south of Carlyss.
Driftwood officials said construction on the project will last seven years, beginning in 2018 and ending in 2025. The first plant could become operational in year four.
The company is expected to file its formal application to construct the facility in March 2017, and will request the commission authorize the siting, construction and operation of it by no later than March 2018.
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