LNG

US liquefied natural gas export projects have to file with regulators very detailed responses to possible emergency scenarios in or around their terminals including offshore incidents with LNG carriers or serious accidents at the production plant.

US regulators have released the environmental review schedule for Sempra Energy’s Port Arthur LNG Phase II expansion in Texas as part of a project expected to be backed by Saudi Aramco, the largest oil production company.

The expansion would add a total of around 13.5 million tonnes per annum of liquefaction capacity to the project with the largest capacity Trains of all proposed US plants.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said it expected to issue its Environmental Assessment of the expansion on January 15, 2021.

Other federal agencies having jurisdiction over the Port Arthur plant will have until April 15, 2021 to complete their reviews.

Sempra has already said that the site located on nearly 3,000 acres of land along three miles of the west side of the Sabine-Neches waterway is capable of supporting multiple expansions and could become the largest of the US plants.

Sempra’s expansion will include two liquefaction trains, Train 3 and Train 4, which are identical to Train 1 and Train 2 previously approved by the FERC.

Each of the two incremental liquefaction Trains will be capable of producing under optimal conditions 6.73 MTPA.

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.

Sempra signed an Interim Project Participation Agreement (IPPA) in January 2020 with Aramco Services Company, a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, for investment in the four-Train Texas plant.

The IPPA follows a heads of agreement for the potential purchase of 5 MTPA of LNG by the Saudis who are also expected to take a 25 percent equity stake.

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 has already been completed.

Experienced US liquefaction plant builders, Bechtel, designed the original two-Train plant and has been retained as the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor.

Sempra first received its environmental impact statement from regulators in October 2018 for the first phase of 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 Commonwealth LNG project in the US, a liquefaction and export plant proposed for the west side of the Calcasieu Ship Channel near Johnson Bayou in Louisiana, has had its revue schedule suspended by regulators to let the company catch up with the process.

Cheniere Energy, the leading US LNG export company through its Sabine Pass plant in Louisiana and the Corpus Christi facility in Texas, is on its way to becoming a world-scale producer, behind only Australia and Qatar, with the approval by US regulators of its Texan expansion venture using mid-scale liquefaction and taking total overall output for Cheniere to 52 MTPA.

US Energy Secretary Rick Perry will tour the Cove Point LNG export plant in Maryland on July 26 and take part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the successful start of operations for the nation’s second liquefaction facility.

US LNG export project investors and potential foreign importers of the fuel have been informed by the US government that non-Free Trade Agreement permits are valid for their whole 20-year terms and they would never be revoked as long as America believes in capitalism.