LNG

Sempra, the US utility company with power and natural gas services centred on California and Texas and LNG developments in the US and Mexico through the Sempra Infrastructure subsidiary, reported a surge in net income for the year and the fourth quarter.

Sempra Energy, operator of the Cameron LNG export plant in Louisiana and developer the Costa Azul venture in Mexico, has again delayed the final investment decision until 2022 on its third proposed export plant, the Port Arthur LNG project in Texas.

Sempra decided to delay the FID on the Port Arthur facility after originally scheduling the decision for around May 2020 until the market downturn pushed back the timetable and the signing of new customers.

“A final investment decision on Port Arthur LNG will likely move into next year, as we work with partners and customers to further reduce the greenhouse-gas emission profile of the project and evaluate the ongoing impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the global economy,” said Sempra.

“We remain confident in our view that the market will need additional supplies of LNG in the coming years and believe Sempra LNG projects are the leading candidates to supply this need,” added the San Diego, California-based company.

The project at Port Arthur in Jefferson County was authorized by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in April 2019 and involves the construction of two liquefaction Trains, each with capacity of 6.73 million tonnes per annum, the largest processing Trains among all the projects on the Gulf Coast.

Engineering and planning within the regulatory permitting process are continuing for the project.

Other Port Arthur facilities include two marine berths for LNG carriers with two LNG loading arms and two hybrid arms, condensate loading and truck facilities.

It additionally has permits for a construction and materials loading and unloading dock and three full-containment LNG storage tanks.

The Port Arthur LNG also has an expansion planned to include two additional Trains, each with its own gas treatment facilities and each capable of producing 6.73 MTPA, along with associated utilities and infrastructure.

All four Port Arthur Trains are expected to include one propane and one mixed refrigerant refrigeration GE Frame 7EA compressor turbine.

Each of the Trains will be equipped with an Acid Gas Removal Unit (AGRU) that utilizes an amine treatment process for acid gas removal.

Emissions from the AGRUs will be controlled using thermal oxidizers.

The Port Arthur project signed a fixed-price engineering, procurement and construction contract in March 2020 with US engineers Bechtel.

Sempra had also previously proposed to sell 5 MTPA of Port Arthur LNG to a unit of Saudi Aramco and take a 25 percent investment from the Saudis, while 2 MTPA has also been sold to the Polish Oil & Gas Company.

IEnova, the Sempra Energy Mexico-based subsidiary developing the Costa Azul LNG export plant on the Pacific Coast, boosted its first-quarter earnings with revenues from the South Texas-Tuxpan natural gas pipeline.

IEnova, the Mexican subsidiary of California-based utility Sempra Energy and developer of the Costa Azul LNG export terminal on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, said third-quarter earnings declined, though it expected future profits from the commercial start-up of the new natural gas pipeline from Texas to Mexico.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has held a naming ceremony for its latest liquefied natural gas carrier newbuild ordered by Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co. to deliver shipments to Japan from the Sempra Energy-operated Cameron LNG export plant in Louisiana.

Sempra Energy, the leading shareholder in the Cameron LNG project in Louisiana, has reached agreement with the engineering, procurement and construction companies, McDermott of the US and Chiyoda Corp., after delays and financial hits and expects the next two Trains to be completed in the first half of 2020.

McDermott and Chiyoda reached an agreement with Sempra subsidiary Cameron LNG for new performance-based commercial considerations related to the construction and commissioning schedule.

The three companies said that this accord further aligned the interests of all parties around the safe, timely completion of Phase 1 of Cameron LNG, a three-Train liquefaction and export project under construction in Hackberry.

Chiyoda had said the Cameron venture was a loss-maker for the Japanese company as the project went behind schedule because of bad weather on the Gulf Coast, a shortage of skilled workers and had additional costing issues.

The Cameron plant is located on the Calcasieu Ship Channel and is majority-owned by the California-based utility Sempra.

The other shareholders apart from Total are Japan’s Mitsui & Co. and Japan LNG Investment, a company jointly owned by Mitsubishi Corp. and shipping company NYK Line.

The carrier “Marvel Crane” lifted the first cargo from Train 1 at Cameron on May 31 and it was delivered to France.

The first phase of the Cameron project includes building the first three liquefaction Trains that will enable the export of around 12 million tonnes per annum of LNG, or about 1.7 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas.

The first Cameron cargo was loaded following a visit to the facility by US President Donald Trump.

“Commissioning of Train 1 at Cameron LNG continues to advance, and the first commissioning cargo was shipped from the facility earlier this year,” said Sempra.

“Consistent with previously disclosed timing, Train 2 and Train 3 are expected to begin producing LNG in the first quarter 2020 and second quarter 2020, respectively,” added the company.

“We believe it is reasonable to expect that the overall economics of Cameron LNG will not significantly change as a result of this agreement,” stated Sempra.

“Sempra’s projected share of full-year run-rate earnings from the first three trains at Cameron LNG continues to range between $400M and $450M annually,” it added.

Sempra Energy, the California-based utility and operator of the Cameron LNG export plant in Louisiana, has filed a request to expand its Port Arthur project in Texas where the liquefaction Trains will be the largest in the US.

The Sempra processing Trains at Port Arthur would be the largest built in the US, each with capacity of 6.73 million tonnes per annum, though smaller than the world’s largest Trains of 7.8 MTPA of capacity operating at the Ras Laffan plant in Qatar.

Sempra has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to initiate a pre-filing environmental review to its original plan for two Trains, each with 7.73 MTPA of output, by adding two more Trains of the same capacity at the facility in Jefferson County in Texas.

The addition of Train 3 and Train 4 would double the facility’s output from the current 13.46 MTPA to a total of almost 27 MTPA.

The company plans to build the plant on a site along the west side of the Sabine-Neches Ship Channel, about five miles south of the city of Port Arthur.

The expansion will utilize the same liquefaction Train design as that put forward for the initial plant so that much of the initial engineering design is already complete.

Bechtel designed the original two-Train plant and has been retained as the project engineer.

Sempra said that it proposes to file its formal application for the expansion in January 2020.

“In that application, Sempra will request that the Commission issues authorization for the siting, construction, and operation of the expansion project by no later than January 2021,” the company explained.

“Sempra anticipates requesting authorization to begin construction in March 2022,” it added in its FERC request.

Sempra first received its environmental impact statement from regulators in October 2018 for the Port Arthur project.

The previous FERC review addressed the potential environmental effects of the construction and operation of the various proposed facilities. as well as the Texas Connector and Louisiana Connector pipelines.

The original filing covered two liquefaction Trains, three LNG storage tanks, each with a capacity of 160,000 cubic metres, a new marine terminal with two LNG vessel berths, an area for support vessels, an LNG transfer system and a truck-loading area.

The United States shipped 11 liquefied natural gas cargoes for a third week as the nation’s three facilities keep up their production rates and the newest and fourth plant, Cameron LNG at Hackberry in Louisiana, has seen its first cargo depart on a Japanese-owned carrier amid rising pipeline exports to Mexico and falling imports from Canada.