Global Energy Monitor’s September 2025 terminal release lists 89 LNG terminal units as under construction, spread across 76 terminals. For most of them it records the year each unit was first planned to start. For fewer, it also records a latest planned start year. Set the two side by side and they say something a single snapshot cannot.
The comparison
Only 44 of the 89 units have both years, so those are the ones that can be compared. Of them:
| Latest plan against original plan | Units |
|---|---|
| Later | 42 |
| Same year | 0 |
| Earlier | 2 |
Not one of the 44 is still planned for the year it was first planned for. Among the 42 that moved later, 23 moved by a single year and 19 by two years or more. The pattern holds on both sides of the chain: 19 of the 20 export units and 23 of the 24 import units in the comparison are planned later than first planned.
The longest moves in the data are five to six years:
| Terminal | Originally planned | Latest plan |
|---|---|---|
| Filipinas LNG Gateway Project FSRU | 2022 | 2028 |
| Brunsbüttel LNG Terminal | 2022 | 2027 |
| Cyprus FSRU | 2021 | 2026 |
The only two units planned earlier than first planned are Cedar FLNG Terminal (2029 to 2028) and the first phase of the KOGAS Dangjin LNG Terminal (2031 to 2027).
Some units are past their plan altogether. Three are still listed as under construction with a latest planned year before the release itself: Antigua Power LNG Terminal and Damaiyu LNG Terminal with 2024, and Teluk Lamong LNG Terminal with 2023.
What the comparison cannot tell you
The tracker does not say why any date moved, so neither can we. A slipped date might reflect a construction delay, a financing change, or a better estimate replacing an optimistic first one. All the data supports is that the latest plan is later.
The larger caveat is coverage. Of the 89 units, 81 report an original planned start year but only 44 report a latest one. For the other 37 the tracker knows when the unit was first meant to start and shows no current plan at all, and 8 units report neither. If units with no current plan behave differently from those with one, the 44 are not a fair sample of the 89, and this site does not fill the gap with an estimate.
The 44 that do report a year are grouped, export and import kept apart, on the construction timeline, with the units that report none in their own row. The next release will bring new original and latest years, and the movement between them will appear in the change log.