LNG

Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) has signed a second US LNG accord to receive volumes from another Texas export, the Port Arthur liquefaction joint venture in Texas being developed by Sempra Infrastucture, and has followed up on a deal signed earlier in June with the Rio Grande export project in the Port of Brownsville.

Sempra Infrastructure, the owner of the Cameron LNG plant in Louisiana and with other LNG interests in the US and Mexico, has named Tania Ortiz Mena has President of the company.

US utility Sempra, whose assets include LNG projects on the US Gulf Coast and Mexico and natural gas and power businesses in California, reported full-year earnings of $2.09 billion compared with $1.25Bln in 2021 and was preparing an imminent final investment decision on the Port Arthur LNG project in Texas.

The US state of California, which has always rejected large-scale LNG imports or transfers, is now the centre of a major natural gas, power and water crisis blamed on planning policies dictated over the years by environmental activists. 

Sempra Energy, the owner of the US Cameron LNG export plant in Louisiana, the Port Arthur venture in Texas and the Costa Azul liquefaction project in Mexico, has signed an preliminary accord to supply Poland with 2 million tonnes per annum of cargoes.

Sempra’s LNG unit has entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Polish Oil and Gas Company (PGNiG) for the cargoes from its portfolio projects in North America.

“We look forward to continuing to work with PGNiG to help meet their energy objectives from our strategically positioned LNG facilities and development projects on the Gulf and Pacific Coasts of North America,” said Justin Bird, Chief Executive of Sempra LNG.

Paweł Majewski, CEO of PGNiG, said his company valued its relationship with Sempra LNG and was keen to continue developing these ties.

“The MOU allows for shifting the volumes originally contracted at Port Arthur LNG to other facilities from Sempra's projects portfolio,” explained Majewski.

Sempra, based in San Diego, California, is also developing additional LNG facilities and carbon sequestration infrastructure along the value chain on the Gulf and Pacific Coasts.

Sempra explained that the Polish accord was non-binding and was completed in connection with the termination of a previous sale and purchase agreement (SPA) signed between the parties in 2018 that provided for 2 MPTA of LNG shipments to be delivered from the Port Arthur plant.

Sempra LNG owns a 50.2 percent interest in Cameron LNG, a three-Train export facility operating in Hackberry in Louisiana.

Sempra is currently considering the scale of a proposed expansion of the plant through one additional liquefaction Train with an offtake capacity of over 6 MTPA.

Sempra LNG along with its Mexican subsidiary, IEnova, and French major TotalEnergies are transforming the existing import terminal at Costa Azul in the state of Baja California into an export plant.

The first phase is already under construction and first production of LNG is expected by the end of 2024.

Sempra added that a potential Costa Azul expansion project was in the early stages of development.

Executives from the leading LNG companies in North America and India took centre stage at the Gastech Virtual Summit on the key issues facing the natural gas industry, with Sempra LNG saying the energy transition was already happening in California and gave an estimate of natural gas needed in LNG terms to back up renewables.

Sempra Energy, the California-based utility and liquefied natural export plant developer, said it signed an accord for Saudi Aramco, the oil company of Saudi Arabia, to take a stake in the proposed Port Arthur LNG project in Texas.

Sempra Energy, the California-based utility and owner of the Cameron LNG export plant in Louisiana, said its Mexican subsidiary had reached agreement with the regulators in Mexico on two key natural gas pipelines supplying cross-border US supplies.

The Sempra Energy-led Cameron LNG export project in Hackberry Louisiana has formally asked the federal Energy Regulator for permission to begin the facility's first shipments of commissioning cargoes to free trade agreement countries and non-FTA states as authorized by the Department of Energy.

“Commissioning activities are progressing well for Train 1 and Cameron LNG anticipates exporting LNG produced during commissioning according to the schedule provided,” the Cameron project told the FERC.

“To meet the schedule provided, Cameron LNG is requesting authorization for the commissioning cargoes on or before May 16, 2019,” said the Sempra joint venture.

“With the first production of LNG from Train 1, Cameron LNG will file weekly commissioning reports as requested by the Commission,” the company added.

Sempra, the San Diego, California-based utility has also said it expected to begin posting earnings from the first processing Train by mid-2019.

Sempra has also increased its projected share of full run-rate earnings from the first three Trains at Cameron to be between $400 million and $450M annually, up from the previous projection of $365M to $425M.

The Cameron project’s first phase includes three Trains with export capability of almost 15 million tonnes per annum.

At least two of the three Trains are expected to be producing LNG by the end of 2019.

The Cameron project is jointly owned by Sempra, French major Total, Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co and Japan LNG Investment, a venture owned by Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. and the shipping company Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, known as NYK Line.

When Cameron ships its first cargo it will be the fourth US LNG export plant to begin commercial operations after Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi plants and Dominion Energy’s Cove Point facility.

Sempra has a strategy to achieve around 45 MTPA of LNG production by the mid-2020s through three plants it is developing, the Cameron facility, Port Arthur LNG in Texas and the Costa Azul terminal on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.

Sempra Energy said the Cameron liquefied natural gas export plant at Hackberry in Louisiana was in the final stages of commissioning and production would be starting soon as the California-based utility forecast higher future LNG earnings.