Investment decision made for Cameron LNG

PARIS, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- French energy company GDF Suez said Thursday it made a final investment decision on a liquefied natural gas plant planned for Louisiana.

GDF Suez is a partner with Cameron LNG for the LNG plant planned for Hackberry, La. The plant is designed to produce and export up to 12 million tons of LNG per year.

"We are very pleased to partner in one of the first LNG export projects in the United States," Gerard Mestrallet, president and chief executive officer of GDF Suez said in a statement.

Production of the facility should be completed in 2019 at a cost of $10 billion.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued its final environmental impact statement on the Cameron LNG facility in early May. The construction and operation of the facility would result in some environmental damage, but that damage would be rendered "less-than-significant" by the company's proposed mitigation strategies, FERC said.

The project is the sixth such project in the country to receive approval to export LNG to countries that don't have a free-trade agreement with the United States since 2011.

GDF has export deals for LNG sourced from the Cameron facility with several Asian countries.