(Bloomberg) -- Over the course of his colorful career, Charif Souki has been an investment banker, a restaurateur, a wildcatter and now a U.S. natural gas export pioneer. His latest business bet may be the costliest one yet.
Tellurian Inc., the company Souki co-founded four years ago to build a $29 billion liquefied natural gas export plant in Louisiana, has been thrown into turmoil by a slump in the international market for the fuel and concern the project won’t secure the necessary backing. And now the fast-spreading coronavirus is stifling demand for LNG, making a massive global glut even worse.
Souki’s career has been characterized by reinvention, a skill that may prove useful as Tellurian struggles to right itself. Born in Cairo in 1953 and raised in Beirut, he got his start as an investment banker focusing on the oil and gas industry. He later teamed up with his brother to open a chain of restaurants and bars, including Los Angeles’ Mezzaluna. The celebrity hotspot became notorious after the murders of employee Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, who ate her last meal there. Souki closed the restaurant in 1997.
In 1996, Souki founded Cheniere Energy Inc. to explore for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. When the company failed to hit a gusher, Souki transformed it into a developer of natural gas import terminals. At the time, gas prices were soaring to record highs amid dwindling domestic production. That all changed with the shale boom, which flooded the U.S. market with supply. Souki swiftly changed course again, converting Cheniere’s import terminal in Louisiana into an export facility and putting the company on track to become the first to ship gas from the lower 48 states.
Cheniere became the biggest supplier of American gas to overseas buyers, vaulting the U.S. into the ranks of the world’s top LNG exporters. But Souki wasn’t around to see the company reach those heights: He was ousted in 2015 amid a push from billionaire investor Carl Icahn, months before Cheniere shipped its first cargo. Icahn accused Souki of overspending and said his aggressive expansion plans were putting the company in jeopardy.
Souki had “all these -- I hate to say it -- harebrained ideas,” including buying oil companies, Icahn said in a 2016 interview. “I’ll tell you now what he knew -- he knew how to go almost bankrupt, because that’s what happened to him.”
In an interview earlier this year, Souki responded to Icahn’s criticism, sounding an optimistic note on the outlook for Tellurian before its recent stock slump.
“Carl decided to describe the venture I wanted to invest in as ‘harebrained’ and four years later it turns out maybe Tellurian isn’t so harebrained,” he said.
Souki co-founded Tellurian just three months after his departure from Cheniere. In his role as chairman of the new company, he remained the consummate salesman, using his track record as an LNG trailblazer to help drum up interest from investors. Tellurian’s market capitalization soon soared above $4 billion.
“This is easy compared to what we had at Cheniere,” Souki said in a 2016 interview. “I have money and we don’t have any debt.”
At Tellurian, Souki’s ambitions to expand beyond LNG exports were undimmed. The company spent $85 million in 2017 to buy shale assets in Louisiana, becoming the first U.S. developer to secure gas for its export terminal by producing the fuel itself.
Though Tellurian hasn’t reached a final investment decision on Driftwood, a project that wouldn’t start producing LNG until at least 2023, the company had operating expenses of about $9.4 million a month last year. By the end of December, it had 176 employees and office space in Houston, Washington, London and Singapore.
Souki initially proposed a novel way to fund Driftwood: Avoid debt by asking investors to pay a total of $12 billion up front, in return for a stake in the project and the ability to buy fuel at cost. Total SA signed on last year.
But larger market forces have gotten in the way of Souki’s plans. New export terminals from the U.S. to Australia inundated the global LNG market, sending prices for the fuel plunging and clouding the outlook for new projects. Cheniere said last week that two buyers had decided to cancel cargoes for April, a move that could be an ominous sign for an already oversupplied market.
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