LNG

Freeport LNG is continuing the restart of the Texas plant at Quintana Island on a phased basis after Hurricane Beryl damaged some plant equipment while the local Texas power company is hoping to re-connect all customers by July 19.

“We are completing initial repairs on the damage sustained to our fin-fan air-coolers in the hurricane,” said a Freeport spokesperson.

The Freeport plant is located 40 miles to the northeast of the hurricane’s landfall at Matagorda in Texas on July 8.

The company said it was restarting its first LNG Train and intended to re-start the two other liquefaction Trains shortly afterwards for output to progress to the nameplate capacity of 15 million tonnes per annum.

Reduced rates

However, output is expected to be at reduced rates at the plant that is experienced in re-starts after an explosion and fire at the facility in November 2022.  Most of 2023 was then spent carrying out repairs and having them approved after testing.

Regulatory and energy safety bodies are against quick re-starts until full safety checks have been carried out.

The Freeport plant has also had to await the lifting of port restrictions by the US Coast Coast and actions by other state bodies in the hurricane aftermath.

Power supplies across the state are expected to be 98 percent restored by July 17.

CenterPoint Energy, headquartered in Houston, Texas, is the main energy delivery company in the area responsible for electric transmission and distribution and natural gas supplies and has still to fully restore power.

CenterPoint said it had now restored power to 92 percent of impacted customers and remained on track to restore electricity to around 98 percent of impacted customers by the end of the day on Wednesday, July 17.

The company said it then expected to restore power to all customers who can receive it by Friday, July 19.

“We are grateful to our crews who have restored power to our customers at a stronger pace than we have been able to in any hurricane in our history, despite the difficult conditions,” explained Lynnae Wilson, Senior Vice President, Electric Business.

Work teams

“We continue to work around-the-clock to get our remaining customers back online,” she stated.

In addition to damaging CenterPoint's electric infrastructure, the company said that Hurricane Beryl may have caused damage to customer-owned equipment.

Specifically, customers in Texas were being asked to check their weatherhead, the point where power enters the home through an electric service drop, which is often a pipe located on the side of the residence or building.

“If the weatherhead is damaged, crews cannot safely restore service to the home until a licensed electrician has made the necessary repairs,” CentrePoint added.

Freeport LNG, the US export facility on Quintana Island in Texas, is set for regular operations as port restrictions are lifted after Hurricane Beryl and as power supplies across the state are expected to be 80 percent restored by July 14.

The US Freeport LNG export plant on Quintana Island in Texas has announced scheduled shut-downs of its liquefaction Trains for repairs and maintenance and de-bottlenecking to  boost output in the future.

A leading Texas politician said he believed that the Biden Administration and the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had stalled the restart of the Freeport LNG export plant after the June 2022 fire to keep winter domestic natural gas prices low in Texas and the Gulf Coast.

Brooks Landgraf, who is a lawyer and a Republican representative in the Texas state legislature for the West Texas city of Odessa, said the most recent Henry Hub price was $3.25 per million British thermal units, less than a third of the $9.85/MMBtu price last August 22 and “there was no other conclusion” to be drawn.

Landgraf said that Freeport LNG had been ready to resume full operations last mid-November after the fire on June 8 as all the damage had been repaired in early Fall.

He noted that just as full operations were about to kick off, the FERC came up with a list of additional demands that kept Freeport LNG shuttered till the initial start-up was begun on January 14, 2023.

A full resumption isn't expected at the Quintana Island plant until March following a ramp-up of production.

“I am looking at the actions that have been taken and the picture that has been painted and it's reasonable to assume that this is the case,” said Landgraf.

He is also Chairman of the Texas House Environmental Regulation Committee, and added that he had been disappointed but not surprised to see FERC behave in such a “blatantly political” manner.

“I've seen it time and time again, the federal government doing everything it can to curtail the exploitation of our natural resources,” he said.

Hostility

“So this is another front in the Biden Administration's war against fossil fuels,” added Landgraf.

“One thing remains clear. LNG is part of the equation to meet the energy needs of the modern world,” he stated.

“The world needs energy from oil and natural gas to function and we must continue to invest in the Permian Basin and continue producing oil and gas,” he said.

"When I was growing up in Odessa, America was dependent on the Middle East and energy independence was a pipedream. Now the Basin is the secret weapon not only for Texas but for the nation,” he added.

He made his statement after the 88th session of the Texas Legislature was convened on January 20.

“It’s the honor of a lifetime to serve as a voice for the Permian Basin in the Texas House of Representatives,” Landgraf said.

“The hardworking men and women who live and work in Ector, Ward, Winkler and Loving counties deserve to have their voices heard in their state government,” he said.

“I’m headed back to the state capitol to continue fighting to defend and expand their rights and liberties,” he declared.

During the next 140 days, the Texas House of Representatives, along with the Texas Senate, will consider legislation including how to allocate the state’s record budget surplus of nearly $30 billion. 

Freeport LNG has provided an update on its re-start plants stretching into the first quarter of 2023  because of repairs and production and operational changes.

US export plant Freeport LNG in Texas plans to undertake a facility overhaul of work and safety methods as it prepared to return to full production ramp-up by March 2023 after the shut-down caused by the June 8 fire in 2022.

One of the three liquefaction Trains at the US Freeport LNG export plant at Quintana Island in Texas remained shut down on October 27 after a recent fire incident presumed to have been caused when a compressor tripped at the facility.

The US Freeport LNG export plant at Quintana Island in Texas has been given three more years by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to complete its Train 4 expansion at the facility by May 2026.

Freeport had previously delayed its own final investment decision on building a fourth Train until 2021 because of the depressed energy markets and low prices and demand.

“As with most LNG projects around the world, Covid-19 and other market challenges have negatively impacted our development efforts,” Freeport said at the time.

Now the FERC has granted Freeport’s recently filed request for a formal delay to completion of the fourth Train at the project, led by the company’s Chief Executive, the energy entrepreneur Michael Smith.

Freeport began commercial operations in May 2020 for its third Train with liquefaction services for French major Total and South Korean utility and energy company SK E&S under their tolling agreements.

Previously, Freeport CEO Smith had said he was unsure when he would advance the Train 4 expansion as he had no firm long-term contracts in place for the fourth Train.

A preliminary agreement signed in 2018 by Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corp. for 2.2 million tonnes per annum from Train 4 expired without being finalized.

Smith cited a list of challenges facing FIDs in February 2020 before the Covid-19 shutdowns, including record low prices and weaker than expected demand in Asia. At the time Covid-19 had been confined to China.

He said this had created a perfect storm of headwinds for producers looking to construct new liquefaction plants or additional processing Trains.

The FERC said that it had issued public notice in August 2020 of the applicant’s request for an extension of time to build Train 4 and noted that no comments were filed from the public against such a move.

“Based on the facts presented in the request, the applicants are granted an extension of time until and including May 17, 2026, to complete construction of the project and make it available for service,” the FERC said in its statement.

Freeport LNG Development will now be able to go ahead in its own time to construct the additional facility in Brazoria County, Texas.

“The proposed Train 4 Project will allow the applicants to liquefy for export an additional 5.1 metric tonnes per annum of LNG or the equivalent of approximately 0.74 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas,” the FERC order stated.

More than a dozen US developers are pursuing projects for new plants or additional production capacity and have yet to announce positive FIDs.

Only Venture Global has been moving to the construction stage with two new projects in Louisiana, Calcasieu Pass and the Plaquemines facility.

The first phase construction at Freeport saw the building of three Trains and 15 MTPA of output.

The original Freeport terminal was completed in 2008 as an import facility with one berth and two storage tanks, each of 160,000 cubic metres capacity.

A second loading berth and a 165,000 cubic metres capacity full containment LNG storage tank were added. The Train 4 project is the scheduled second phase of construction.

About 13.4 MTPA of Freeport production capacity from the first three Trains has been contracted under use-or-pay liquefaction tolling agreements with customers including European and Japanese contract holders, BP of the UK, Germany’s Uniper and Japan’s Jera Co. Inc. and Osaka Gas.

The first three Trains were built by a consortium including McDermott International and Zachry Construction Corp. of the US, along with Chiyoda Corp. of Japan.

However, US engineering company KBR was selected by Freeport as the preferred bidder for the engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning contract for the fourth-Train expansion.

Under the terms of the contract, KBR would provide EPC, commissioning and start-up of a nominal 5 MTPA LNG Train and associated gas pre-treatment plant.

There is now a question mark over that Train 4 EPC contract as KBR has said it is pulling out of lump-sum LNG and energy construction projects.

The selection of KBR was made following completion of a nine-month front-end engineering and design verification, execution planning and EPC proposal process.

The Freeport LNG export plant on Quintana Island in Texas has asked regulators to place its third liquefaction Train into service by April 30 as the US Gulf Coast export buildout continues amid the global supply glut and economic slump.

The Freeport LNG export plant on Quintana Island in Texas was given permission by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to brings a second loading jetty into service to meet increasing cargo numbers.