Venture Global plots 160-billion-dollar AI power empire amid LNG talks with Qatar, advanced negotiations cover at least 3 million tons a year from Louisiana plant, gas exporters turn into AI infrastructure as bottleneck shifts from chips to megawatts

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Venture Global is in advanced talks to supply QatarEnergy with at least 3 million tons of LNG a year from its CP2 plant under construction in Louisiana, Reuters reported late Thursday, while the company is separately reported to be planning a $160 billion expansion into AI data centers. The shares jumped more than 6 percent on Friday and have roughly doubled this year — though they still trade about 45 percent below the $25 IPO price.

The buyer is the unusual part. Qatar operates Ras Laffan, the world's largest LNG complex, and in March Iranian missiles struck it, damaging two of its fourteen trains and removing 12.8 million tons of annual export capacity, roughly 17 percent of the total. Chief executive Saad al-Kaabi has said repairs will take three to five years and cost about $20 billion a year in lost revenue; government revenue fell 42 percent in the first half of the year. September exports came to 1.6 million tons, less than a quarter of the prewar average, and Kpler projects 0.6 million tons for October. In the meantime the country has been buying spot cargoes — many of them from Venture Global.

Hours before the Venture Global report surfaced, QatarEnergy signed a separate deal with Cheniere for up to 4 million tons a year through 2054, lining up American supply from two exporters at once. Goldman Sachs' LNG team treats the Qatar negotiations and the AI expansion as products of the same market. The constraint on AI buildout has moved from chips to electricity: data centers need megawatts before they need models, and a gas producer can now sell the same molecule twice — once as LNG under a decades-long contract, once as power inside the data centers themselves. The companies that own the molecules are entering AI infrastructure from the supply side, selling the one input the chipmakers cannot fabricate.

QatarEnergy renews its force majeure notices monthly — the latest runs through November — while the contracts it is signing in Louisiana run to 2054.