Clough, the Australian energy and LNG construction company, said it received a contract to design and build the offloading jetty at the Papua New Guinea LNG project.

The LNG shipping market during the second quarter of 2010 saw too many idle vessels chasing too few cargoes for short voyages at depressed carrier rates, Golar LNG said in a quarterly review of the market.

The Netherlands-based LNG terminal developer 4Gas, which has a stake in the Dragon LNG terminal in the UK, has cancelled its Maple LNG import project in Canada, after abandoning two other ventures in France and the Dutch port of Rotterdam over the past year.

Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Co. (RasGas), one of the two LNG producers that make Qatar the world leader in output, said it was continuing to broaden its market base and has delivered its first LNG cargo to Portugal.

GE Oil & Gas said it signed a contract to supply compressors and long-term service for the ExxonMobil-led LNG project in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea.

The Golden Pass LNG terminal is nearing completion on the Texas-Louisiana border, but its two jetties and five storage tanks are coming into play at an inauspicious time for the LNG market in the US, where most import facilities are failing to achieve even 30 percent capacity.

LNG demand in the US has been declining because of increasing unconventional gas supply and in Europe any of the proposed Nabucco, Nord Stream and South Stream natural gas pipeline mega-projects will also alter LNG strategies in European Union countries.

Send-out of regasified LNG from US import terminals averaged less than 900,000 million cubic feet per day in the past week, almost 45 percent lower than the average of 1.6 billion cubic feet per day during the first quarter of 2010.