How Billionaire Wes Edens’ Big Energy Dream Hit the Rocks

For 20 minutes, Wes Edens barely pauses as he talks about the sunny prospects for his beleaguered liquefied natural gas company, New Fortress Energy. Dressed in an open-collar blue shirt, his once-blond hair down to his neck, the effervescent 64-year-old billionaire from Montana appears relaxed, flicking through a printout of a PowerPoint presentation he says he prepared himself. It outlines NFE’s operations in Brazil, Mexico and Nicaragua, as well as the global growth potential of liquefied natural gas, or LNG.

It’s a cloudless November morning in Puerto Rico, where NFE supplies more than a third of the island’s natural ...