The contract, valued at over $2 billion for the engineering, procurement and construction of the third train of the natural gas liquefaction and export facility, was awarded to a joint venture between CB&I, Chiyoda International and Zachry Industrial.

The three-train LNG facility will have a total capacity in excess of 13.9 million tons per year of LNG upon completion. The project also includes the construction of a 165,000 cubic meter (cbm) LNG storage tank.

The three companies have been involved in the construction of trains one and two, which began in November 2014 when final approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Department of Energy (DOE) were granted.

Freeport LNG has estimated that it will take approximately 45 months to for the first LNG train to commence commercial operations, with each subsequent train to start up at approximately six-month intervals thereafter.

Almost all the supply has been signed under long-term tolling agreements with Japanese energy companies Osaka Gas, Chubu Electric and Toshiba Corp., South Korea’s SK E&S and oil major BP.