During a visit to Lake Charles Monday, Sempra Infrastructure President Dan Brouillette spoke of plans to expand the Cameron LNG facility and allow for another train to export 6.75 million tons per year of liquefied natural gas.

Brouillette, who was the 15th U.S. Energy Secretary, and served under former President Donald Trump, said permits were recently filed with the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission on the expansion. Sempra has asked FERC to complete the permit process by the end of the year.

“We’re hopeful that if they can give us a permit in the first part of next year, we can move to final investment decision quickly after that,” he said. “We’re ready to go.”

The three trains at the Cameron LNG facility are already exporting 11 to 12 million tons of LNG annually at full capacity, he said. The expansion, Brouillette said, is being pushed because the world market continues to demand liquefied natural gas and natural gas.

“We’re excited that we’re doing it here in Louisiana as well because of the opportunity for economic growth in this region, which has been phenomenal,” he said. “Over the last 10 years, this place has just grown.”

Brouillette said the number of new jobs related to the expansion depends on the schedule and timing of the facility. The Cameron LNG website mentioned the expansion adding 1,500 on-site engineering and construction jobs and 69 permanent jobs to operate the facilities.

“It’s going to be a significant number; it’s quite an expansion,” he said.

Partners with Cameron LNG are the Paris-based TotalEnergies and Mitsubishi and Mitsui out of Tokyo. Those companies take the gas being liquefied and export it worldwide.

Brouillette grew up in Napoleonville. As energy secretary, he said he was able to view a broad spectrum of energy providers worldwide. He said Sempra’s diversity of energy supply is what attracted him to the company.

Brouilette called the situation in Ukraine catastrophic, but he said Europe is doing the right thing by moving away from Russian gas and reducing imports by about 85 percent by the end of this year. Roughly 40 percent of gas that goes into Europe comes from Russia. Brouillette said this opportunity will create a lot of economic activity in Louisiana, Texas and other oil and gas producing states.

“That creates an enormous hole in the energy portfolio over in Europe, and that hole must be filled,” he said. “So companies like Sempra, like other gas producers and infrastructure developers around the world, are going to be called up to fill those gaps in supplies. The bottom line is someone has to step up and help Europe if they are going to divorce themselves from Russian gas, and we stand with our allies ready to do that.”

Brouillette said the strategic petroleum reserve is not designed to impact the price of fuel. It’s intended to protect Americans from a supply disruption.

“We only import about 500,000 to 600,000 barrels per day from Russia,” he said. “So, even if that were to go away, it’s a bit difficult to see how that is a supply disruption to the American people.”

Brouillette responded to groups opposed to LNG facilities, saying that natural gas is used as a base load fuel to generate electricity and is cleaner than coal, another base load fuel. He said the extent of replacing coal in developing countries with natural gas is a plus for the environment.

Brouillette also mentioned a permanent carbon storage facility in Hackberry that is currently in development. He said it would be able to store up to 4 million tons of carbon annually. Permits have been filed with the state and federal Environmental Protection Agencies.

“If we can capture the carbon off of our own facility, it will lessen the impact dramatically of our facility,” he said. “It allows us to go to other partners in this region, the refineries for instance, and do the same thing.”

George Swift, Southwest Louisiana Economic Development Alliance president/CEO, said the region is strategic to the growth of liquefied natural gas.