The environment for North American liquefied natural gas (LNG) final investment decisions is looking brighter in 2022, with buyer interest in long-term contracts on the rise amid record-high spot prices.

While the Covid-19 pandemic caused global demand to soften and resulted in project delays in 2020 and 2021, a handful of North American projects are expected to move forward next year.

“Understandably, contracts were hard to come by during the pandemic as natural gas prices globally collapsed to record-lows,” said BTU Analytics energy analyst Connor McLean.

But things have turned around in less than a year, with unseasonably high Japan-Korea Marker (JKM) prices. That “could be the final push that some buyers need to forego the volatility in the spot market for a...