ExxonMobil and QatarEnergy built a $10 billion gas export terminal on the Texas coast and right now it is barely running. Golden Pass LNG, their joint venture at Sabine Pass, has taken in little to no natural gas for three days, according to data from financial firm LSEG, and appears to be offline.

That is a notable stumble for a facility that was supposed to reshape how American gas reaches the world.

What the data show

Golden Pass has been going through a commissioning process since March 30, the kind of start-and-stop testing that every major industrial plant goes through before it runs at full speed. That part is normal. What caught attention this week is the scale of the pullback. On Monday, the facility was drawing about 20 million cubic feet of natural gas for its first processing unit. That unit's full capacity is roughly 800 million cubic feet per day, meaning the plant was running at about 2.5 percent of what it can handle.

Three days earlier, on June 23, the plant processed nearly 600 million cubic feet, which is closer to full capacity. But that higher volume triggered flaring, the burning off of excess gas, and Golden Pass filed a report with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality saying the cause of the flaring is still under investigation. The plant did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Why this matters beyond Texas

Golden Pass, when it eventually runs at full capacity, is expected to export more than 18 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas per year and process up to 2.6 billion cubic feet of gas per day. That would make it one of the largest LNG export terminals in the United States, a country that has become the world's biggest LNG exporter.

European buyers are watching closely. Since Russia cut off most of its pipeline gas to Europe in 2022, American LNG has filled a large part of the gap. Every new terminal that comes online expands how much the U.S. can ship, which matters for European energy security and, in theory, puts downward pressure on the global price of gas.

A delay at Golden Pass does not reroute the global gas market overnight. The facility is still commissioning, not yet in commercial operation, so buyers have not yet built Golden Pass volumes into their firm supply plans. But every week it stays quiet is a week that the capacity it represents stays off the table.

The bigger pattern

Golden Pass also carries a complicated backstory. Its original construction contractor, Zachry Holdings, filed for bankruptcy in 2024 after cost overruns, and the project had to be restructured. ExxonMobil and QatarEnergy brought in new contractors and pushed forward, but the financial turbulence added months to the timeline. The commissioning stumbles this week fit that broader pattern of a project that has repeatedly taken longer than expected to reach stable operation.

Commissioning a facility that chills natural gas to roughly minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit so it can be loaded onto ships is genuinely difficult engineering. Flaring events during startup are common. The question is how long the fine-tuning takes and whether the investigation into last week's flaring reveals a mechanical issue that requires more significant repairs.

Two more processing units are still to come after this first one. The full export capacity of Golden Pass, the kind that would show up meaningfully in European supply or American gas prices at home, depends on all three running. That day is still some distance away.