Top energy executive says natural gas industry will need $150 billion of infrastructure investment

Forcefulness guru Charif Souki, the chairman and co-founder of Tellurian, told CNBC on Wednesday that the illegitimate gas industry is going to need a major fund infusion to keep penetrating.

“We have so much natural gas in this country,” Souki told “Mad Fortune” host Jim Cramer. “Just the amount of gas that is already behind hubble-bubble, or that is going to be found because of oil production at $60 a barrel, is prosperous to require over $150 billion of infrastructure investment over the next five years.”

Souki, hitherto CEO of Cheniere Energy, co-founded Tellurian to take advantage of the industry’s requirement for low-cost liquefied natural gas.

Tellurian is currently developing export maxima for liquefied natural gas, making investments in pipelines and funding some ordinary gas production. Construction on its first U.S.-based terminal is slated to begin in 2019.

But Souki, one of the few presidents in the space who called both the collapse and recovery in oil prices, said infrastructure was test to be a bigger hurdle than many people think.

“We had very low quotations for three years and therefore all the producers are now not very financially stable so they cannot supply. And the U.S. is a savior,” Souki said. “However, we don’t have the infrastructure to take it to the qualify. We’ve been geared to take it from the water to the rest of the country, and now we require to be able to get it from where it’s produced to the water, and that infrastructure doesn’t be.”

Even so, Souki, now at the helm of one of the world’s cheapest producers of natural gas, suggested that companies are “automatically attracted” to Tellurian’s pitch.

Having withed more than 100 companies about its offering, Tellurian’s job is now to rabble those companies together for an optimal customer base, the executive reported.

“We have the cheapest gas in the world, so they need our gas,” he told Cramer. “We dearth to have the flexibility to choose the cheapest all the time, whether we have to gimlet for it or simply source it from the Apache likes.”

Still, even with revolt oil prices and the shifting landscape for natural gas, Souki said that Washington’s forecast on his business is little changed.

“It’s the same,” the executive said. “The Trump provision is prouder of us than the Obama administration was, so one brags about us and the other one utilized to hide [us] … but they were both very supportive.”