The US Energy Department has approved liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from the Cameron LNG project of Sempra Energy, officials announced on Tuesday.

The conditional approval of exports from the Louisiana terminal to countries with which the US does not have a free-trade agreement (FTA) is the sixth approval from the US since 2011.

Cameron's application to export up to 1.7 billion cubic feet/day raises the total of approved US LNG export projects to approximately 8.5 billion cubic feet/day of potential capacity.

As expected, the president of the Center for Liquefied Natural gas (CLNG) trade group welcomed the announcement.

“The approval order for Cameron LNG is an incremental victory for our economy and our workforce, industries and trading partners," said Bill Cooper, president of CLNG.

"I congratulate Cameron LNG for reaching this important milestone," he continued. "The pending applications in DOE’s queue represent a tremendous opportunity to grow the US economy by unleashing billions of dollars of investment, while creating thousands of jobs and increasing revenues to state and local governments. By deciding those pending applications expeditiously as DOE’s rules require, those projects will have a chance to compete in the international marketplace and bring dollars back to the United States. If not, the winner will be attrition, which really means no winner at all.

“There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that LNG exports are in the public interest. We urge DOE to consider all pending applications without delay.”