In a sign that the United States shale gas boom is making global waves, two Japanese conglomerates and a big French energy player signed agreements on Friday to invest up to $7 billion in a liquefied natural gas project in Louisiana.
The companies â€" Mitsui and Mitsubishi of Japan, and GDF Suez of France â€" each plan to take a 16.6 percent stake in the gas export plant being developed at Hackberry, La. The complex is being built by Sempra Energy, a company based in San Diego with annual revenue of about $10 billion. The companies agreed last year to help develop the project.
GDF Suez predicts that the plant will begin operations in 2017. The companies’ final decision to make their investment will depend on the project’s receiving necessary permits, GDF Suez said.
International companies, responding to a ravenous global appetite for natural gas, particularly in Japan and Europe, want access to shale gas from the United States, which has emerged as an important new source over the last few years. But because the United States has only recently shifted from being a gas importer to being self-sufficient in the fuel, the government has not yet agreed to allow exports except in a few cases and to the 20 countries with which it has free trade agreements, including Panama and Costa Rica.
Export approval, under consideration for several projects by the Energy Department, will be necessary before the potential of shale gas can be fully realized. On Friday, the department approved a Texas project called Freeport L.N.G. It has also signed off on a facility being built by Cheniere Energy at Sabine Pass in Louisiana that is expected to start exporting in 2015.
But international companies are investing all the same, betting that United States shale gas will eventually be able to go onto the global market.
In a statement, Sempra Energy estimated that the foreign partners would be putting up $6 billion to $7 billion in return for just under half the equity in the project, which is forecast to yield 12 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas annually for 20 years. In return, they will receive all the gas. Sempra will retain a stake of just over 50 percent.
‘‘These agreements represent a major step forward in the development of our L.N.G. export project,’’ Sempra’s president, Mark A. Snell, said in a statement.
For international players, the attractions of United States shale gas are the large potential volumes and the relatively low cost of extracting it.
Other foreign companies that have lined up American supplies include the Korean company Kogas, Sumitomo of Japan and BG Group, the British-based company that is a big player in the liquefied natural gas business.
Natural gas prices in the United States are now about $4 per million British thermal units, the industry’s standard measure. European-traded prices are in the $10 per million B.T.U.’s range, with Asian prices about $15 per million per B.T.U.’s. Long-term contract prices are often higher, and liquefication adds to the cost over plain gas.
Japan’s liquefied natural gas imports have surged after the shutdown of nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and were up by 11 percent last year. Japanese imports account for about one-third of the world’s total liquid gas market, according to a recent study by Bernstein research.
Japanese utility executives have said they want to reduce the prices they are paying by tying them to United States supplies.
‘‘It is a win-win situation,’’ said Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer in New York. Such deals will help stabilize global fuel prices over the long term and benefit the United States economy, he said.
A big worry in the industry is whether United States’ exports could contribute to lower prices around the world, eroding profits. ‘‘It will give buyers a choice, something they have never had before,’’ said Jonathan Stern, chairman of the gas program at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
But industry executives think that surging demand, especially from Asia, will easily absorb the exports that the United States government might eventually permit.
United States gas ‘‘won’t have a material effect on long-term pricing,’’ Martin Houston, BG’s chief operating officer, said in a recent presentation on the company’s Web site.
Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington.
A version of this article appeared in print on 05/18/2013, on page B3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: 3 Foreign Companies Invest in U.S. Project to Export Liquid Gas.