Cheniere had been going all-out on an import terminal, not an export terminal. And building an export liquefaction terminal could be literally ten times as expensive as an import regasification facility. Then Shell called to ask the same question. This had to be taken seriously, for Shell was no entrepreneur; it was a supermajor oil and gas company, and one of the leaders in LNG. These calls sounded the alarm that U.S. supply was growing much faster than the market could absorb—meaning there would be no market in the United States for imported LNG.
