FERC gave the go-ahead Monday after more than two years of analysis. When built, the $3.8 billion facility will be able to export up to 1.8 billion cubic feet natural gas per day. Dominion expects to have it up and running by June 2017.

“Now that our nation is developing a burgeoning surplus of natural gas, Cove Point can help send a small portion … to allied nations looking for stable supplies of clean energy,” Diane Leopold, president of Dominion’s natural gas subsidiary, Dominion Energy Solutions, said in a Monday news release.

Environmental groups and local activists have long opposed Dominion’s efforts to build the LNG export facility on its existing Cove Point site. “Exporting LNG will mean more drilling and fracking, and that means more climate pollution, more risk of contaminated groundwater, and more threats to the health of people who live near gas wells,” Deb Nardone, who directs the Sierra Club’s Beyond National Gas Campaign, said in a statement.

Regulators approved this $10 billion plant in Cameron Parish in 2012, making it the first project to win approval outside of Alaska. The export facility, which is already under construction, will be built next to an existing gas-import terminal that’s connected to major shale oil and gas developments in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas.

Houston-based Cheniere Energy expects the project will come online in late 2015. It will be able to export 2.8 billion cubic feet of LNG per day, much of which will go to customers based in London, Barcelona, India and South Korea. Cheniere is planning a second export facility near Corpus Christi, Texas, that could begin operating as early as 2017, according to the company.

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