LNG

April 5 (LNGJ) - Enbridge Inc., the Canadian pipelines company, said its Texas Eastern Transmission subsidiary had received approvals from the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to commence service of a natural gas pipeline associated with its Venice extension LNG feed-gas project in Louisiana.

   The Venice extension was designed to supply feed gas to Venture Global LNG's Plaquemines export plant currently under construction on the banks of the Mississippi River south of New Orleans. The FERC said it granted Texas Eastern Transmission’s request to commence service on the 3-mile (4.8km), 36-inch Venice extension pipeline with capacity of around 1.3 billion cubic feet per day.

Shell has joined with the other UK-based major BP to file a complaint with the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) against LNG developer Venture Global claiming the Arlington, Virginia-based company was “illegally withholding information” about delays in delivering LNG from its Calcasieu Pass export plant in Louisiana.

Plaquemines LNG, the project being developed in Louisiana by Venture Global, has submitted supplemental information to enable the start of work in December on the latest phase of project development work related to connections with the Gator Express pipeline project to supply feed gas.

Venture Global LNG, owner of the newest US export plant at Calcasieu Pass in Louisiana and with three other projects in development, has signed up Malaysian energy company Petronas for a 20-year supply deal.

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.

A Greek-owned carrier departed the Calcasieu Pass LNG plant in Louisiana with the inaugural first cargo and headed for Japan as America’s seventh and newest large-scale export facility opened for business to meet growing demand for natural gas around the world.

Chart Industries, the US maker of equipment for LNG and industrial gases facilities, has received a full notice to proceed (FNTP) for the production of cold boxes and brazed aluminum heat exchangers for Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG export plant on west bank of the Mississippi River.

The Chart equipment will be for the first phase of the venture with production of 10 million tonnes per annum.

“In conjunction with the FNTP, Chart booked the full equipment order of $136 million for the Plaquemines project from Baker Hughes,” said Chart.

“Chart will begin recognizing revenue on this project in 2022 with a multi-year staggered delivery schedule,” explained Atlanta, Georgia-based Chart.

Chart is benefiting from the LNG boom on the US Gulf Coast and after supplying equipment for the Plaquemines plant, it has also been contracted as a supplier for Cheniere Energy’s Corpus Christi plant expansion and for Tellurian’s Driftwood LNG project.

The Plaquemines project is under preliminary site preparation on the river bank 30 miles south of New Orleans.

First phase production will comprise nine modular blocks with the 10 MTPA of output eventually followed by nine additional block for 20 MTPA in total.

Funding

Venture Global had already raised $500 million of funding in transactions arranged by American and Japanese banks to finance construction activities at Plaquemines.

The Arlington, Virginia-based company previously closed a term-loan involving JPMorgan Chase Bank, Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Bank of America and Japan’s third-largest banking group, Mizuho Bank.

Venture Global is currently developing 70 MTPA in four projects in Louisiana.

The most advanced plant in terms of construction is Calcasieu Pass in Cameron Parish in Louisiana, south of Lake Charles, with 10 MTPA of capacity and which was shipped its first cargo on March 1.

The other three projects are expected to each produce around 20 MTPA of LNG.

In addition to the Plaquemines and Calcasieu Pass developments, Venture Global is planning two other plants, Delta LNG on the Mississippi and CP2 LNG, which would be built on a 540-acre site in Cameron Parish, adjacent to the Calcasieu Pass facility.

The 174,100 cubic metres capacity LNG carrier “Yiannis” has arrived at Venture Global’s LNG export plant, America’s newest, at Calcasieu Pass in Louisiana, signalling that the first cargo is expected to be lifted in the next 48 hours.

McDermott, the US engineering company, said its storage business, CB&I, has been awarded a contract by Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG project for two 200,000 cubic-metre storage tanks.

Venture Global, the US LNG export plant developer, is now in the process of investing in and constructing four liquefaction and export plants in Louisiana with 70 million tonnes per annum of output as the latest facility applied for regulatory permits.