LNG

The US said liquefied natural gas exports will be lower over the next few months of 2023 because of high gas stocks in Europe and Freeport LNG being offline while record dry gas production growth has been outpacing demand.

US LNG exporter Venture Global has received permission from regulators to commission liquefaction blocks five and six at the Calcasieu Pass LNG export plant in Louisiana.

The Calcasieu Pass plant in Cameron Parish in Louisiana, south of the city of Lake Charles, shipped its first cargo at the start of March 2022.

Calcasieu Pass comprises 18 small-scale modular liquefaction Trains each with 0.626 million tonnes per annum of capacity and configured in 9 blocks for total nameplate output of 11.26 MTPA.

Using modular Trains that were built in Italy and shipped to Calcasieu Pass to be installed, Venture Global was able to cut construction costs and to bring forward the start-up schedules.

After the latest FERC authorisation for blocks five and six, the project will be two-thirds complete.

Success

“Given the success of (previous) commissioning operations, Calcasieu Pass respectfully requests authorization to place Blocks 5-6 in service,” said the request from Venture Global which was granted by FERC.

In total, Venture Global has about 70 MTPA of LNG export capacity under construction or development in Louisiana.

The Arlington, Virginia-based company’s three other projects are each expected to have nameplate capacity of around 20 MTPA.

Two of the other plants are called Plaquemines and Delta LNG and are on the banks of the Mississippi River south of New Orleans.

The fourth project, called CP2 LNG, will be built on a 540-acre site in Cameron Parish, adjacent to the existing Calcasieu Pass facility.

Venture Global has host of long-term agreements with customers for its various projects.

The list includes Shell, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Italy's Edison, Portugal's Galp, Spain's Repsol, Polish Oil and Gas Company, Chinese major Sinopec, German utility EnBW and Malysia's Petronas.

ExxonMobil Corp. has signed up with US plants developer Venture Global for two long-term Sales and Purchase Agreements amounting to volumes of 2 million tonnes per annum from Louisiana LNG export plants.

Venture Global, based in Arlington, Virginia said ExxonMobil LNG Asia Pacific (EMLAP), which has an LNG trading licence in Singapore, will receive 1 MTPA from the Plaquemines export plant being developed on the banks of the Mississippi River.

A further 1 MTPA will be lifted for the ExxonMobil unit from the CP2 LNG project being designed and constructed alongside the existing Calcasieu Pass plant in Cameron Parish where several mid-scale Trains are already operating.

“This is the second supply agreement for CP2, which is expected to commence construction in 2023,” said Venture Global.

This refers to a previous deal with New Fortress Energy, headquartered in New York, for 1 MTPA of LNG from the future CP2 plant. NFE is also taking 1 MTPA of LNG from Venture Global’s Plaquemines facility and both deals are for free-on-board cargoes for a period of 20 years.

Venture Global said that both of its new export facilities will replicate the same design seen in operation at Calcasieu Pass, where speed of execution resulted in the production of first LNG only 29 months after the final investment decision.

Fourth plant

The company is also developing a fourth plant on the Mississippi River called Delta LNG and would take its overall output to 60 MTPA.

“Venture Global is deeply honored that ExxonMobil has chosen to collaborate with our company across both of our next projects, Plaquemines and CP2,” said Miichael Sabel, Chief Executive of Venture Global LNG.

“As a global LNG leader, ExxonMobil’s support for Venture Global’s innovation and engineering execution is a defining moment for our combined teams and the wider LNG market,” Sabel declared.

ExxonMobil is developing its own LNG export plant along the Gulf Coast at Texas in partnership with QatarEnergy on the Sabine-Neches Waterway.

However, the Qatar-ExxonMobil project has advanced at a slow pace because of doubts several years ago over market demand issues that have now been resolved and work has gathered pace to construct three liquefaction Trains with around 16 million tonnes per annum of output.

ExxonMobil, based in Irving, Texas, is also a main partner of QatarEnergy in many of its existing Trains at the huge Ras Laffan complex in Qatar in the Arabian Gulf.

Commenting on the SPAs with Venture Global senior Vice President of LNG for the ExxonMobil Upstream Co., Peter Clarke, said LNG has an important role to play in helping lower emissions in the industrial sector.

“We look forward to working with Venture Global as we continue to grow ExxonMobil’s LNG portfolio and progress our plans to reliably deliver natural gas from the US Gulf Coast to global markets,” added Clarke.

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has written a letter to the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma inviting them to take part in the review of a third LNG export project being pursued in Louisiana by Venture Global, developer of the Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines projects.

Both Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines are being constructed with liquefaction and export capacity of 10 million tonnes per annum and the third plant, called CP2 LNG, will have 20 MTPA and be built in Cameron Parish in Louisiana.

CP2 LNG plans to construct the liquefaction plant on the mainland, while also constructing the marine facilities on Monkey Island between Calcasieu Pass and the Calcasieu Ship Channel.

The pipeline affiliate for the project, called CP Express, would also construct and operate about 85 miles of a new 48-inch-diameter natural gas pipeline originating in Jasper County, Texas and terminating at the CP2 LNG plant.

The FERC addressed its invitation to participate in the permit process to Bobby Komardley of the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma and located in Anandarko, Oklahoma.

Seeking input

“We are interested in receiving your comments on the project to ensure that the concerns of your tribe are identified and properly considered in our environmental analysis,” said the letter signed by FERC official J. Rich McGuire, Division Director of Gas-Environment and Engineering.

“The purpose of the process is to seek public and agency input early in the project planning phase and encourage stakeholder involvement in a manner that allows for the early identification and resolution of environmental issues,” it explained.

“We would very much appreciate receiving your response within 30 days of the date of this letter,” added McGuire in the letter dated September 15.

“If you would like to discuss our process, get further information, or you would prefer to meet with Commission staff, please feel free to contact our Environmental Project Manager or our Project Archaeologist,” added the letter.

“We also request your assistance in identifying properties of traditional, religious, or cultural importance to the tribe that may be affected by the proposed project,” the letter continued.

“Please be assured that we will keep any sensitive tribal information strictly confidential,” it said. “Please note, if you file sensitive tribal information it should be marked “PRIV - Do Not Release,” stated the FERC letter.

In addition, to the plant and main pipeline, CP Express would construct a six-mile-long, 24-inch-diameter lateral pipeline and a 127,000 horsepower compressor station in Calcasieu Parish in Louisiana.

The pipeline facilities would include six meter stations at interconnects with existing pipelines and would be capable of transporting 4 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day to the liquefaction plant.

The planned CP2 LNG facility would consist of 18 liquefaction blocks and support facilities, including six pre-treatment systems, four 200,000 cubic metres capacity LNG storage tanks and two loading docks.

Chart Industries, the US LNG equipment and industrial gases company, reported record first quarter orders, contributing to the highest backlog of $934.1M and including orders with 105 new customers with LNG at front and centre.

Orders in the first three months of 2021 amounted to $417.2M and were the highest in the history of the Atlantic, Georgia-based company when excluding Big LNG.

Chart reported net income of $26.1M in the quarter to the end of March, a three-fold increase on the $8.5M posted in the first three months of 2020.

The company said 2021 orders were driven by broad based demand, including a recovery in certain end markets, continued demand for clean products and a combination of larger liquefaction orders for LNG and hydrogen or numerous smaller orders.

Chart posted quarterly sales of $288.5M, in line expectations when considering typical seasonality as well as the timing shift from the first quarter 2021 to the second quarter 2021 of approximately $10M of shipments.

ISO containers

These were primarily ISO container orders from China that were shipped in March 2021, though the revenue is recognized in April 2021, as well as $5M of revenue from the Venture Global Calcasieu Pass LNG project in Louisiana based on the delivery schedule.

The quarterly sales were 4.5 percent lower than the $301.9M achieved in the prior-year quarter.

“Record orders (excluding Big LNG) across the broader business in the first quarter 2021, coupled with continued execution on profitability set us up early (and often) for a very strong second half of 2021,” stated Jill Evanko, Chart’s Chief Executive and President.

“We are seeing immediate benefit from our strategic inorganic investments in the order book as reflected in our record backlog, and the momentum in the clean revolution - clean energy, clean water, clean food and clean industrial - is just getting started,” added Evanko.

Chart noted among the earnings highlights the $47M order from New Fortress Energy, the LNG-for-power company based in New York, for its “Fast LNG” project, a 1.4 million tonnes per annum liquefier vessel.

Chart additionally commented on the expansion of LNG fuel for trucking in Europe and Asia and the subsequent demand for Chart equipment.

LNG for trucks

“Since January 2021, night-time transit for diesel Euro IV trucks on the Inntal motorway in Austria is not allowed, so LNG trucks allow business owners to continue to transport goods overnight,” explained Chart.

“For example, OMV Turkey is using LNG trucks (with Chart fuel tanks) and there is increasing activity for LNG trucks and buses in locations such as Japan and India,” added the company.

Chart said full-year 2021 sales were expected to be around $1.36 billion to $1.41Bln, inclusive of $21M of Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass revenue ($5M of equipment remaining to ship) as well as $30M of expected 2021 revenue from the acquisition of Cryo Technologies.

This is an increase over the prior full year 2021 sales guidance of $1.32Bln to $1.38Bln as a result  of the strong first-quarter order book.

This includes specific liquefaction projects for Plug Power (hydrogen) and New Fortress Energy (FastLNG) and commercial opportunities increasing from investments and acquisitions completed in the past six months.

“There is no additional Big LNG revenue included in our outlook although we believe at least one new order will be received during the year,” added Chart. 

Venture Global, the US LNG company developing three export plants in Louisiana, said it expected to install the seventh and eighth liquefaction Trains by April at the most-advanced Calcasieu Pass facility and praised the modular method of construction.

US LNG project developer Venture Global has raised $500 million of funding in transactions arranged by American and Japanese banks to finance construction activities at the Plaquemines LNG export project in Louisiana ahead of a final investment decision.

The Arlington, Virginia-based company already has an export plant under construction at Calcasieu Pass in Cameron Parish and has received authorization to build the Plaquemines export facility at river mile-marker 55 on the west side of the Mississippi, about 30 miles south of New Orleans.

The company said it had closed the term-loan involving JPMorgan Chase Bank, Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Bank of America and Japan’s third-largest banking group, Mizuho Bank.

“The transaction was upsized from $400M to $500M based on strong lender interest,” said Venture Global.

“The proceeds will be used to fund pre-FID construction activities at the company's Plaquemines LNG export project as well as for general corporate purposes,” it added.

The transaction was upsized from $400 million to $500 million based on strong lender interest.

Plaquemines will be constructed in two phases, each phase designed with liquefaction and export capacity of 10 MTPA, and possibly more under optimal operating conditions.

Venture Global in December 2020 stated that US engineering firm KBR could have the engineering, procurement and construction contract for the first phase of the Plaquemines project.

The most advanced development by Venture Global is the Calcasieu Pass export plant in Louisiana, which is expected to come on stream in 2022 along with its associated TransCameron Pipeline.

The company is also studying other LNG export opportunities in the state of Louisiana.

Venture Global Chief Executive Michael Sabel said he was pleased to be able to to continue to partner with a group of leading banks, all of whom are lenders to the Calcasieu Pass export project.

“Replicating the successful strategy we pioneered and utilizing the same configuration, we will continue to execute on our commitment to provide the lowest cost LNG to the global market and supply the world's growing demand for clean and reliable energy,” added Sabel.

Venture Global's Plaquemines project has contracted 3.5 MTPA of the facility's 10 MTPA first phase under binding 20-year offtake agreements and received both Department of Energy export authorization and final approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley served as joint lead arrangers on the transaction while Bank of America and Mizuho participated as lenders.

Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP served as legal counsel to the borrower and lenders respectively.

Sept 22 (LNGJ) - Venture Global, the US firm with advanced plans to develop three LNG exports plants in Louisiana, has changed its corporate management structure and founders Robert Pender and Michael Sabel will no longer be co-Chief Executives.

   The Arlington, Virginia-based company said that from October 1, Sabel alone will be CEO and Pender will serve the company as Executive Co-Chairman, a new position created to support the CEO on key strategic and financial matters. Both will continue to serve on the company’s board. “It has been an exhilarating decade working with Mike to create Venture Global LNG and to help reshape the global LNG industry,” said Pender. “There is no person I trust more than Mike to lead this company we created together into the future. I remain fully committed,” he added.

Chart Industries, the US LNG storage, fuel and liquefaction equipment-maker, had its highest orders intake of 2020 in June and for the second quarter there were record sales in LNG vehicle tanks and filling stations as it looked forward to a boost in railcar business.

The US Freeport LNG plant at Quintana Island in Texas has delayed its final investment decision on building a fourth Train until 2021 because of the depressed energy markets and low prices and demand.