Quarterly report pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d)

Related Party Transactions

v3.23.3
Related Party Transactions
 9 Months Ended
Sep. 30, 2023
Related Party Transactions [Abstract]  
Related Party Transactions RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS
 
Below is a summary of our transactions with our affiliates and other related parties, all in the ordinary course of business, as reported on our Consolidated Statements of Operations (in millions):
Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30,
2023 2022 2023 2022
LNG revenues—affiliate
SPAs and Letter Agreements with Cheniere Marketing
 $ 513  $ 1,328  $ 1,742  $ 3,173 
Contracts for Sale and Purchase of Natural Gas and LNG with other affiliates 2  48  3  95 
Total LNG revenues—affiliate 515  1,376  1,745  3,268 
LNG revenues—related party
Natural Gas Transportation and Storage Agreements (1) —  —  —  4 
Cost of sales—affiliate
Contracts for Sale and Purchase of Natural Gas and LNG 2  104  20  166 
Cost of sales—related party
Natural Gas Transportation and Storage Agreements (1) —  —  —  1 
Operating and maintenance expense—affiliate
Services Agreements (see Note 1)
38  39  120  118 
Operating and maintenance expense—related party
Natural Gas Transportation and Storage Agreements (1) 14  18  44  45 
General and administrative expense—affiliate
Services Agreements (see Note 1)
20  23  66  70 
Other—affiliate
Services Agreements (see Note 1)
1  —  1  — 
(1)This related party is partially owned by Brookfield, who indirectly owns a portion of our limited partner interests.

Other Agreements

Terminal Marine Services Agreement

In connection with its tug boat leases, Tug Services entered into an agreement with Cheniere Terminals to provide its LNG cargo vessels with tug boat and marine services at the Sabine Pass LNG Terminal. The agreement also provides that Tug Services shall contingently pay Cheniere Terminals a portion of its future revenues. Under this agreement, Tug Services distributed $4 million and $2 million during the three months ended September 30, 2023 and 2022, respectively, and $8 million and $7 million during the nine months ended September 30, 2023 and 2022, respectively, to Cheniere Terminals, which is recognized as part of the distributions to our general partner interest holders on our Consolidated Statements of Partners’ Equity (Deficit).

Cooperative Endeavor Agreements (“CEAs”)

SPLNG has executed CEAs with various Cameron Parish, Louisiana taxing authorities that allowed them to collect certain advanced payments of annual ad valorem taxes from SPLNG from 2007 through 2016. This initiative represented an aggregate commitment of $25 million over 10 years in order to aid in their reconstruction efforts following Hurricane Rita. In exchange for SPLNG’s advance payments of annual ad valorem taxes, Cameron Parish shall grant SPLNG a dollar-for-dollar credit against future ad valorem taxes to be levied against the Sabine Pass LNG Terminal as early as 2019. In 2018, SPLNG entered into a Memorandum of Understanding, which forgave $7 million of the dollar-for-dollar credits, and in 2022, an
agreement was reached to defer the commencement of the dollar-for-dollar credits until 2027. As of both September 30, 2023 and December 31, 2022, we had $17 million of amounts associated with dollar-for-dollar credits due on advance tax payments to the taxing authorities recorded to other non-current assets on our Consolidated Balance Sheets. Beginning in September 2007, SPLNG entered into various agreements with Cheniere Marketing, pursuant to which Cheniere Marketing would pay SPLNG additional TUA revenues equal to any and all amounts payable by SPLNG to the Cameron Parish taxing authorities under the CEAs. In exchange for such amounts received as TUA revenues from Cheniere Marketing, SPLNG will make payments to Cheniere Marketing equal to the dollar-for-dollar credit applied to the ad valorem tax levied against the Sabine Pass LNG Terminal. We had $17 million of other non-current liabilities—affiliate as of both September 30, 2023 and December 31, 2022 from these payments received from Cheniere Marketing.