After three years of postponing the start of operations at the plant it built in Puerto Sandino, it appears that the US-based New Fortress Energy has shelved its project to generate energy with natural gas in Nicaragua. Its most recent report makes no reference to the plant or its progress, as was the case in previous years. It only states that it will generate profits once it begins operating. Now, the company’s efforts are focused on regaining ground on Wall Street for its shares and overcoming the crisis caused by its debts, which forced it to sell its assets in Jamaica.
According to its earnings reports, New Fortress Energy closed the first quarter of 2025 with a cumulative net loss of $197 million. At the end of June, the cumulative net loss rose to $557 million. Furthermore, in the second quarter, the company also reported «significant non-monetary impairments of assets.» but announced a $473 million profit from the sale of its Jamaican plant and operations, which it completed in May.
According to an industry expert who requested anonymity, it wouldn’t be surprising if New Fortress Energy lost interest in the Puerto Sandino plant, which they planned to use to generate 300 megawatts of natural gas. It’s focused on resolving the serious liquidity problems it faces due to its high debt and low revenue streams.
«I don’t think that will start soon… It’s even possible they have the plant for sale, since they’re not so much dedicated to electricity generation as to natural gas distribution,» the expert maintains.
New Fortress Energy Doesn’t Mention Nicaragua
Indeed, the second-quarter 2025 earnings report that New Fortress Energy delivered to its investors in September barely mentions the Nicaragua project. «We expect our core earnings to increase as we advance our developments in Brazil and Nicaragua, and as expansions in Puerto Rico come online.»
Read also: Why New Fortress Energy could become another failed Ortega investment.
New Fortress Energy Doesn’t Mention Nicaragua
Indeed, the second-quarter 2025 earnings report that New Fortress Energy delivered to its investors in September barely mentions the Nicaragua project. «We expect our core earnings to increase as we advance our developments in Brazil and Nicaragua, and as expansions in Puerto Rico come online.»
This is the same message included in the first-quarter earnings report of this year, which was published in May.
But unlike Nicaragua, which only receives that mention, both reports include extensive explanations of what is being done in both Brazil and Puerto Rico. In the case of Puerto Rico, it even details the negotiations for a long-term natural gas sales agreement to supply the entire island.
According to press reports, New Fortress Energy (NFE) recently signed a $4 billion contract with the Government of Puerto Rico to supply gas to the island for seven years. This company saw its stock price increase by almost 50 percent, reaching close to $3.
Problems in Puerto Rico and on Wall Street
However, the agreement has sparked controversy because the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) claims that the island will pay a higher price for gas than the United States and Europe; and that much of the gas they will pay for is not even needed. Furthermore, the ships carrying the gas are facing logistical problems entering the island. Amid the controversy, stocks fell again and remain in the $2 range.
The financial crisis facing New Fortress Energy even prompted the Nasdaq Stock Market Ratings Department to issue a non-compliance notice in May and give it a deadline to submit the missing financial report.
Experts have no doubt that, amid the multiple problems facing the company, it is seeking a buyer for its Puerto Sandino gas plant. This would allow it to recover capital to pay outstanding debts and focus on more profitable businesses, especially its core business of natural gas supply, rather than power generation as contemplated by the project that brought it to Nicaragua in the midst of a severe crisis.
Read also: The start of natural gas power generation is postponed again, now until 2025.
The Offer to Generate with Natural Gas
In 2020, while Nicaragua was mired in a sociopolitical crisis, New Fortress Energy LLC announced it would invest $700 million to build a plant in Puerto Sandino that would generate 300 megawatts of energy using natural gas.
This investment arrived while the country was mired in a serious sociopolitical crisis, which the Ortega Murillo regime quelled with an escalation of repression that caused the withdrawal of investors, as well as a large portion of international financial organizations and donors.
The start of operations of the New Fortress Energy LLC energy complex built in Puerto Sandino was postponed for the first time in 2021. When the United States sanctioned several officials in the electricity sector.
However, sector specialists assured that the delay was not caused by the sanctions, but by the volatility of the natural gas price caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raised the price of natural gas to historic levels, so high that they questioned whether it would be attractive for the country to purchase energy generated with natural gas.
Is Nicaragua no longer committed to natural gas?
Neither at that time nor in the following years was there an official excuse for the postponement of the start of operations. On the contrary, in January 2023, they signed an energy purchase agreement with the distributor Disnorte-Dissur, of which no details were disclosed. And in September of that same year, through their local subsidiary, NFE Nicaragua Development Partners LLC, Nicaragua branch, they formalized the operating license granted to them by the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM).
Since the signing of the contract and the officialization of the operating license almost two years ago, Nicaraguan energy authorities have never mentioned the delays or the future of the project, which at the time was presented as a great achievement.
The regime offered a warm welcome, as the US company arrived with a $700 million investment, at a time when other investors were withdrawing. Especially out of fear of the sanctions the United States imposed in response to the serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity that, according to international organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations (UN), the Ortega-Murillo regime committed to put an end to the 2018 social protests.
