Sempra Signs 20-Year LNG Deal With Brazil's Petrobras, Banking on a Texas Terminal Still Under Construction

Sempra Infrastructure, a subsidiary of Sempra (NYSE: SRE), signed a 20-year sales and purchase agreement with Petrobras to supply roughly 0.8 million tonnes per annum of liquefied natural gas. According to a company announcement carried by BIC Magazine and LNG Industry, the deal makes Petrobras the first South American company in Sempra Infrastructure's LNG customer portfolio.

There's a minor wrinkle on timing. Yahoo Finance reported the deal was signed September 14, 2026, and BN Americas and LNG Industry both dated the public announcement to September 15 and 16. Energy-pedia, citing Petrobras directly, said the contract was actually signed "at the end of August" 2026. The underlying deal terms are identical across every account. Only the paperwork date differs, likely reflecting the gap between a private signing and a public press release.

Gas That Won't Ship Until The 2030s

The LNG will come from Port Arthur LNG Phase 2, a project under construction in Jefferson County, Texas. Phase 2 reached a positive final investment decision in September 2025 and will add two liquefaction trains capable of producing about 13 million tonnes a year, according to Sempra's own announcement. That nearly doubles the total Port Arthur facility, from roughly 13 million tonnes in Phase 1 to about 26 million tonnes once Phase 2 is finished.

The catch: Phase 2's trains aren't expected to reach commercial operations until 2030 and 2031. Phase 1, which is also still under construction, isn't expected to start until late 2027 for its first train and 2028 for its second. Sempra's own filings describe additional expansion phases beyond that as only in early development. That's four to five years before a single molecule of gas under this new Petrobras contract actually moves.

Justin Bird, CEO of Sempra Infrastructure, called the agreement "an important milestone for Sempra Infrastructure's growing LNG business" and said it "establishes a strategic relationship with one of the world's leading energy companies." Petrobras said in its own statement that locking in long-term volumes reduces its exposure to spot market price swings and strengthens its natural gas portfolio's risk management, an argument consistent with how most utilities and national oil companies hedge fuel supply.

A Bigger Picture: Texas Is Straining Under Demand

The Petrobras contract lands alongside a broader growth story for Sempra. The company's second-quarter 2026 GAAP earnings rose to $1.21 per diluted share, up from $0.71 a year earlier, according to Yahoo Finance's review of the results. Adjusted earnings climbed to $1.16 from $0.89.

Sempra's Texas utility, Oncor, is riding a genuine demand surge. ERCOT, the grid operator for most of Texas, hit an all-time peak load of 91 gigawatts in July 2026. State regulators have signed off on more than $7 billion in new transmission spending to support 16 gigawatts of that growth, and a newly approved interconnection process called Batch Zero could make roughly 44 gigawatts of large-load requests eligible for service, more than 140% above the grid's current 31-gigawatt peak.

That $7 billion in transmission buildout gets paid back through regulated utility rates. Texas ratepayers, not just Sempra shareholders, are financing the grid expansion driving this boom. It's the standard model for regulated utilities, but it represents a cost passed to the people plugged into Oncor's lines.

Management raised full-year GAAP earnings-per-share guidance to a range of $5.02 to $5.55 and held its long-term earnings growth target at 7% to 9%.

The Real Risk Is Execution, Not Demand

A fair skeptic would point out that signing a 20-year contract for gas that doesn't ship for four-plus years is easy to announce and hard to guarantee. Port Arthur LNG Phase 1 is still under construction with a 2027-2028 target, and Phase 2 hasn't broken meaningful ground toward completion. Any delay pushes Petrobras's supply, and Sempra's revenue recognition, further out. Building two massive liquefaction trains on a single Gulf Coast site is a genuine construction and financing challenge, and Sempra's own disclosures describe further Port Arthur phases as still in early development, not committed.

The demand signal is real and independently verifiable. Petrobras is a major, established buyer committing two decades of purchases, and it's doing so as U.S. gas exports expand their reach into new markets. Whether Sempra hits its 2030 and 2031 in-service targets for Phase 2, and whether Oncor's grid buildout keeps pace with ERCOT's record loads, are the two concrete things to watch over the next several years.