U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum traveled to Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana on Thursday to deliver remarks and tour Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG export facility. The visit highlighted the Trump administration’s energy dominance agenda and its achievements.
On his first day, President Trump, alongside the Department of Energy, ended the Biden ban on new LNG export approvals, sending a signal to the world that American energy dominance had returned. The Plaquemines LNG export facility, which was approved by President Trump in 2019, became the newest LNG export facility to come online in the United States.
This event was tied to the Trump administration’s push for “energy dominance,” spotlighted by the reversal of the Biden-era pause on new LNG export approvals, which President Trump lifted on his first day back in office in 2025. The Plaquemines facility, approved in 2019 during Trump’s first term, had recently come online, with its first cargo shipped in December 2024, and this March shipment marked a high-profile milestone.
The tanker’s load—enough to heat 100,000 homes for a year—translates to roughly 150,000–170,000 cubic meters of LNG (a standard tanker size), which, when regasified, yields about 90–100 million cubic meters of natural gas.
Venture Global announced an $18 billion expansion of the Plaquemines facility that day, aiming to boost its capacity from 27 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) to over 45 MTPA with 24 additional trains. Burgum and Wright, joined by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and Venture Global CEO Mike Sabel, framed it as proof of a new “Golden Age” of American energy, with Wright noting Louisiana’s rise as the top LNG-exporting state. The tanker’s send-off to Europe, reportedly Germany, was a tangible flex of that agenda—showing the facility’s output hitting global markets just 50 days into Trump’s term.
The planned expansion of a massive liquified natural gas facility in southeast Louisiana is a beacon for a U.S. energy policy that doubles down on oil and gas exports
This is insane.
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) March 6, 2025
Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are in Louisiana sending off a tanker to Germany with enough natural gas to heat 100,000 homes for a year.
Joe Biden paused these exports. Trump brought them back. pic.twitter.com/2rOw2p58P5