Cross-border team closes first-of-its-kind senior debt project financing for Cedar LNG

A cross-border, multidisciplinary team with members from offices across Canada, the United States and EMEA successfully completed the construction project financing required for the Cedar LNG project, a floating liquified natural gas export terminal facility to be located offshore in British Columbia in the traditional territory of the Haisla Nation. This is a first-of-its-kind project globally, as the Cedar LNG Project is majority owned by the Haisla Nation (one of Canada's First Nations), alongside its partner Pembina Pipeline Corporation, a leading Canadian publicly traded energy company that owns pipelines transporting hydrocarbon liquids and natural gas products, gas gathering and processing facilities and an oil and natural gas liquids infrastructure and logistics business. Upon construction, it will also be the first floating LNG facility in North America.

The financing was comprised of a senior secured construction term loan and a senior secured revolving working capital and letter of credit tranche, under a single combined multi-currency credit facility provided by a syndicate comprising international commercial banks from around the world as well as Canada’s export credit agency.

We represented the senior lenders (the banks and EDC), the administrative agent and the account bank. The financing structure follows recent precedent US Gulf Coast LNG transactions, utilizing a banks/bonds financing plan infrastructure, with an expectation that the commercial bank debt comprising the construction/term loan will be refinanced through the issuance of long-term bonds in the debt capital and private placement markets. 

This transaction truly demonstrates the firm's position as the leading legal advisors in the global energy and infrastructure sector.

The transaction was led by Noam Ayali in the US, based on his extensive experience in financing US Gulf Coast LNG projects. The Canadian team was led by Jennifer Kennedy and Rick Borden, and included KayLynn Litton, Christopher Horte, Tina Peters, David Bain, Nikita Stepin, Aaron Stephenson, Darren Hueppelsheuser, Jay LeMoine, Matthew Longstaff (counsel to accounts bank), Craig Hickey, Yu Meng Zhu, Katherine MacPhail, Emily Chan, Lindsay Bec, Anna Wingfield, James Farrell, Benita Ikpo, Johanna Vanneste and Siobhan Quigg. The team also included colleagues from the United States and EMEA regions, including Francis McCabe, Tobi Amoo, Grace Choi, Amy Mitchell, Dan Prati, Thomas Hirsch, Jake Falk, Jesse Hollingsworth, Kevin Prokup, Stefan Reisinger, Keith Rosen and Marian Baldwin Fuerst (United States); and Richard Howley, Scott McCabe, Charez Golvala, and Hector Ribeiro (EMEA).