FID to first cargo: how long an LNG train actually takes to build
Ask an EPC contractor how long a train takes and you'll get a number from the project schedule. Ask a lender or a trader who's been through a few of these and you'll get a different answer: it depends, and the gap between those two answers is usually where the risk lives.
Most liquefaction trains run somewhere in the four-to-six-year range from final investment decision to first cargo, with floating and brownfield expansions sometimes faster and large greenfield multi-train sites often slower. That range is wide enough to be nearly useless on its own, which is why the phase-by-phase breakdown matters more than the headline number.
What happens between FID and first cargo
FID unlocks financing and triggers full notice to proceed on the EPC contract, but very little changes on the ground for months. Early-stage work is engineering, procurement, and site preparation: piling, foundations, utility corridors, laydown yards. None of it is visible from the road, and none of it shows up as a structure.
The next stretch is where most of the calendar gets spent. Major equipment, compressors, cold boxes, and whole modules get fabricated off-site, often overseas, then shipped and set on foundations. Module fabrication and delivery schedules are notoriously hard to pin down from outside the fence because the work is happening in a yard nobody with a stake in the project can walk into.
Once modules start landing on site, erection and tie-in work begins: piping, instrumentation, electrical, insulation. This is the phase where a project either closes the gap to its original schedule or falls further behind, because weather, labor availability, and rework all compound here in a way they don't during early civil work.
Mechanical completion comes next, followed by commissioning and start-up, which for an LNG train means cooldown, introducing feed gas, and ramping the liquefaction process before the first cargo loads. Commissioning alone can run six months to a year on a large train, and it's where schedules that looked fine on paper tend to reveal themselves.
Why the contractor's schedule and the site don't always agree
Every EPC contract comes with a schedule, and every monthly progress report has a percent-complete number attached to it. The number is usually honest in the sense that nobody's lying on the report. It's also usually built from the contractor's own weighted work breakdown, which can lag or lead the physical reality depending on how early-phase engineering hours get counted against a budget that's mostly steel and concrete.
A trader positioning around a startup date, a lender watching covenant tests tied to mechanical completion, and an EPC partner managing a joint venture all have the same practical problem. The only confirmation that modules are on foundations, piperack is connected, and structure is growing comes from a site visit, and site visits don't happen monthly on a project across an ocean.
That's the gap satellite monitoring fills: giving the people reading the contractor's schedule something to check it against, without replacing that schedule. Watching module placement and structure growth from imagery on a monthly cadence turns "the schedule says 68% complete" into something you can see change, month over month, against the dashed line of the planned startup date. Refinery Progress builds that outside-the-fence read specifically for people tracking a refinery or LNG train against a startup date they didn't set themselves.
The short version
FID starts the clock, but the first eighteen months are mostly invisible groundwork. The middle years are module fabrication, delivery, and erection, which is where real schedule risk concentrates. The final stretch is commissioning, often underestimated, before gas moves and a cargo loads. The contractor's schedule gives you a starting point; watching the structure grow month to month gives you a way to check it. If you're holding exposure to that startup date, it's worth seeing which months the site gained on the schedule.