ranian drones damaged the world’s biggest liquefied gas complex at Qatar’s Ras Laffan last week. Attacks on oil tankers have closed the Straits of Hormuz, blocking the only path to market for QatarEnergy, which had to shut down its plants and declare force majeure on LNG shipments. It’s unclear when it will restart. “The most optimistic timeline to resume full production is one month,” predicted TPH analyst Zack van Everen last week.

Two of the biggest likely beneficiaries of this development: Robert Pender and Mike Sabel, the cofounders of America’s soon-to-be biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, Venture Global. Incredibly, from its first cargo just four years ago, Venture Global is on track to export about half of what pioneering LNG giant Qatar would have this year, or roughly 40 million tons of supercooled -260 degree LNG. It’s an enormous amount, the energy equivalent of 16 billion gallons of gasoline, enough to fill 500 insulated tankers to be shipped around the world.

“We probably have the largest number of available cargoes in the market,” CEO Sabel, 59, said in an earnings call last week – which puts him and Pender, 72 – based in Arlington, Va. – in the best position of any global energy tycoons to profit enormously from the sudden need to plug the shortfall. Spot prices for LNG cargoes have more than doubled and gas in Europe is now going for five times the price of pipeline gas in Louisiana, home to Venture Global’s two megaprojects, Calcasieu Pass LNG, and Plaquemines LNG.

“They are in a unique position,” says Jason Feer, head of LNG intelligence for consultancy Poten & Partners. “They have a lot of volume that they can sell into this spike.”

It’s the latest gamble that has paid for this duo, who have more personal skin in the global LNG game than anyone. Already the two billionaires, who own 80% of Venture Global’s shares, have seen their fortunes jump nearly 29% to over $12 billion apiece since the U.S. attacked Iran. (In comparison, shares of America’s biggest LNG producer Cheniere Energy are up 9% in the same time).

Pender and Sabel spent the past decade scouting, engineering, financing and erecting its two LNG megaprojects now operational on the Louisiana coast at Calcasieu Pass on the Gulf Coast east of Beaumont, and in Plaquemines Parish near New Orleans. The latter, built at a cost of $23 billion on the west bank of the Mississippi, 55 miles upriver from the Gulf of Mexico, shipped its first cargo in late 2024.

Despite no LNG experience, Sabel, an investment banker, and Pender a D.C. attorney who represented India, China and Guyana in financing energy megaprojects (and is married to JFK’s niece) saw vast future demand for U.S. LNG exports. So they hatched a plan in 2010 to build LNG liquefaction bigger and faster than competitors.

Whereas many older LNG plants might produce 5 million tons a year from each single giant liquefaction “train,” VG instead decided to go with smaller trains, built in a factory by Baker Hughes. These units would produce just 700,000 tons per year each but there would be many more of them. Its Calcasieu Pass LNG project – the first to deploy these machines at large scale – has 18 modules now producing 12 million tons per year. Its second project Plaquemines LNG, which now has 36 trains, is expected to run at a rate of 28 million tons this year. Already VG as its often called is off to a strong start: even before the latest developments, 2025 revenue hit $13.6 billion, up from $7.9 billion in 2024. Net income hit $2.2 billion, up from $1.5 billion in 2024. VG’s growth plans call for a doubling in size of each location.

One other reason these founders will likely cash in is their apparent willingness to aggravate vital customers. Even before they could finance construction of these plants, VG needed to find long-term "offtakers," who agreed to buy set amounts of LNG for 20 years once the new-fangled plants were fully operational. Among those who signed up were oil giants Shell, BP and Chevron. But even after Calcasieu Pass was operational, Venture Global insisted on selling the product on the spot market for its own account, blaming an extensive “commissioning” process (pre-commercial shipments of LNG are supposed to undergo final testing and safety inspections before full operation).

Shell, BP and others filed arbitration claims in early 2023, demanding to be paid $8 billion in profits on 350 commissioning cargoes shipped from Calcasieu during what happened to be record high prices. Shell, which sought $3.5 billion, lost in both arbitration and on its appeal. Meanwhile, BP won in arbitration last October, which means VG may be on the hook for damages as high as $3.7 billion. The BP news sent VG’s shares plunging 50% but they have since recovered more than half that sum thanks to the war.

Undeterred, Pender and Sabel have already been shipping hundreds of pre-commercial cargoes out of Plaquemines and expect hundreds more to go out before the big oil customers start getting their promised supplies. After all, the economics right now are stunningly good for American LNG exports, especially ones like VG that owns its own plants and tankers (it has nine). With an average profit of about $40 million per cargo, “everybody's going to try to wring more efficiency out” of their equipment, says Feer. “Venture Global will clearly be the biggest beneficiary of that.” Analysts figure that for every extra dollar per mmbtu that VG can tack on in fees or price realizations this year, it’ll generate $600 million in additional EBITDA or up to $8 billion EBITDA, up from $6.3 billion last year. Compare that with Cheniere Energy, currently the U.S.’s biggest LNG exporter, which has far fewer un-contracted cargoes available this year and will likely only make another $50 million more per dollar.

Venture Global knows LNG buyers won't have a lot of other options until the Strait of Hormuz reopens. There was talk earlier in the week that Europe might relax its sanctions on Russian gas, but then Russian LNG tanker Arctic Metagaz exploded and sank in the Mediterranean on Tuesday night (the crew apparently escaping by life raft to Libya). Russia blamed Ukrainian sea drones, leading President Vladimir Putin to threaten that “maybe it would make sense for us to stop the supply of gas to European markets right now.”

Who knows how much of that they’ll keep in the long run given their deals with the big oil giants? “They make $15-20 billion, maybe they have to pay back a few billion?” says Feer. “My guess is they’ll feel ok for that.”

The bigger question is what Venture Global will to do with all this cash. Pender and Sabel, who each pocketed more than $50 million last year in salary, bonus and dividends, will likely enjoy a nice payout – some of which will likely go to support pro-LNG politicians like President Donald Trump, who reversed Joe Biden’s presidential LNG permitting pause. (Pender visited Mar-a-Lago in 2024 and gave $1 million to the Trump Inaugural Campaign).

Otherwise, Sabel says they’ll keep reinvesting earnings into the next $20 billion of expansion projects. If they keep up the pace of construction, by the time all current projects are complete in a couple years, Pender and Sabel will preside over 81 million tons per year of LNG capacity, even more than Qatar on a good day.

© Forbes