A converted import terminal on Mexico’s Pacific coast holds 2 United States export permits worth up to 0.50 billion cubic feet a day, where the single train it runs can only chill about 0.4

A berth on the Baja California coast, floodlit, a tanker alongside.

Loading arms swing out over the water and lock onto the ship’s manifold.

Gas chilled to about minus 260 degrees runs outward through them, which is the opposite of what this jetty was built to do.

The site was a receiving terminal for years, and the conversion reused the jetty, the deepwater berth and the existing storage tanks rather than building them again.

Everything physical about the operation happens in Mexico.

The permits that allow it are American.

There are two of them.

Why a plant in Mexico needs a license from Washington

The molecules decide the jurisdiction. Feed gas for this terminal is produced in the United States and moves south by pipeline before it is ever liquefied.

American law treats the export of domestically produced natural gas as something that requires federal authorization, and that requirement travels with the gas across the border.

Liquefying it in another country does not release it. The cargo leaving the Pacific berth is still exported American gas, and it sails under an American order.

That is what makes this terminal unusual. It sits under two regulatory systems at once, and the one that caps its output is not the one that issued its construction permits.

A Gulf coast plant answers to the same federal office, but without a border in the middle of its supply line.

The plant is foreign. The gas stays domestic.

The two numbers and what separates them

The authorization comes in halves, and the halves are not equal.

Exports to countries with a free trade agreement covering natural gas are approved at up to 0.50 billion cubic feet a day. Those applications are treated as consistent with the public interest and granted without a contested review.

Exports to everyone else are approved at up to 0.44 billion cubic feet a day, and that half goes through a public interest proceeding with notice, comment and the possibility of protest.

The gap between the two figures is small. The procedural difference behind them is not.

It also sorts the customer list in an awkward way, because several of the largest importers of this fuel sit on the side that carries the heavier approval path.

One number is a formality. The other is a proceeding.

What the terminal can physically do

Now put those ceilings next to the plant.

Phase one is a single liquefaction train with a nominal capacity near 0.4 billion cubic feet a day, which is below both authorizations.

The site was a receiving terminal for years, and the conversion reused the jetty, the deepwater berth and the existing storage tanks rather than building them again.

Mechanical completion came at the end of 2025. Feed gas entered the facility in the spring, first production followed in June, and the first outbound cargo left on the eighth of July.

It is the second export terminal in the country, after one on the Gulf side, and the only one of the two facing the open Pacific.

Reusing a berth and tanks is also why the conversion was affordable at all, since marine works are usually the slowest and most expensive part of building a plant like this from nothing.

The license allows more than the plant can deliver.

So what is actually the ceiling

For now the train is. A single unit running at nameplate cannot reach either authorized figure, so the paperwork is not what limits the business.

Behind the train sits the pipeline system carrying gas south from Texas and across Baja California, and that capacity is shared with domestic Mexican demand.

Pipeline constraint rather than gas supply is the familiar limiter in this industry, an argument a major midstream operator has made repeatedly about export growth on the Gulf.

The authorized volumes and the American origin of the feed gas are set out by a federal agency.

Permits set a maximum. Steel sets the actual number.

What would have to change for the ceiling to bind

A second phase has been proposed at the same site, and additional trains are what would push output toward the licensed limits.

Proposed is the operative word. Nothing about a later phase is under construction, and the economics depend on buyers signing long contracts rather than on the permit already in hand.

The route is the genuine advantage and it does not expire. A ship leaving here is already in the open Pacific, with no canal transit and no Gulf weather between the berth and Asian buyers.

That advantage is why other developers keep looking at this coastline, and why a permit ceiling above current capacity is worth holding rather than trimming.

Another operator is chasing the same geography with a far larger plan, piping Permian gas west toward a Pacific shortcut.

The first cargo, the reused infrastructure and the commissioning dates are described by the operator.

A converted import terminal now ships outward, and the number that matters is not on the license.