Cherniere Energy Partners has secured US$5.9bn in financing to continue constructing the Sabine Pass LNG project in Louisiana, USA.

The debt has four tranches. The first is worth US$4.5bn and GTR can reveal that it has 16 mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners: BBVA, Scotiabank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Crédit Agricole, Credit Suisse, HSBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, JP Morgan, Lloyds, Mizuho, Morgan Stanley, RBC Capital Markets, Société Générale, Standard Chartered and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group. Siemens also joined the transaction as a lender.

Tranche two is a direct loan from the Export Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) and is worth US$420mn. Tranches three and four are worth US$330mn and US$750mn, respectively and are covered and funded by Kexim and K-sure.

Morgan Stanley has acted as administrative agent, with BNY Mellon acting as collateral agent and depository bank. Standard Chartered acted as a consultant on the Korean facilities.

The finance will be sued to construct gas liquefaction trains three and four of the Sabine Pass project. Construction of rains one and two began last August and are said to be 30% complete. Cheniere Partners plans to build up to six trains. Each train is expected to have nominal capacity of about 4.5 million tonnes of LNG a year.

The project has raised an additional US$3bn this year on the corporate high-yield bond market, in which all of the aforementioned banks, plus Deutsche Bank were involved.