LNG

LNG Journal editor

Lake Charles LNG, the export project being pursued by pipeline and midstream company Energy Transfer and Royal Dutch Shell, has filed with regulators for an extension to mid-December 2025 for the venture to be completed and a final decision to go-ahead is expected by year-end. 

The previous order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had authorized the deadline of 16th December 2020 to place the facilities into service.

Investment decision

The Lake Charles project request also states that a final investment decision could occur as early as the end of 2020.

Energy Transfer and Shell plan to move towards a potential FID while starting to seek engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) companies. A tender for expressions of interest was issued in May 2019.

The long-standing Lake Charles project had received a draft environmental impact statement from the FERC in September 2015 for a liquefaction plant to produce 16.5 million tonnes per annum of LNG.

Shell gained its stake in the Lake Charles facility’s reserved capacity from its takeover in 2015 of BG Group of the UK.

The export project will include the construction of three liquefaction Trains and will use the existing LNG storage and marine berthing facilities owned by Equity Transfer since its takeover of Southern Union Co. in 2013 for more than $5 billion.

The proposed Lake Charles liquefaction plant was first awarded a permit by the Department of Energy in August 2013 to ship cargoes to countries without a US Free Trade Agreement. Now the volumes for that permit have been increased.

Before the shale-gas boom Lake Charles was one of the centres of US LNG imports, with BG bringing in cargoes from nations such as Trinidad and Equatorial Guinea.

BG and Energy Transfer had previously scheduled a commercial start-up for the plant as an export venture in 2019.

The 440-acre site is located close to the Henry Hub with access to many of the largest natural gas production areas in the US through Energy Transfer’s existing and new pipelines like the Trunkline Gas System.

Indian liquefied natural gas terminal developer H-Energy and Kakinada Seaports signed an agreement for an LNG regasification and reloading terminal to be sited at Kakinada port in Andhra

LNG Journal editor

Air Products, the US maker of LNG processing equipment and a leading industrial gases provider and plant developer, said it would invest $250 million in a project in Jiangsu Province in China as part of its gasification growth strategy and would also boost its Chinese merchant supply capability.

The French Atlantic Coast Montoir-de-Bretagne LNG import terminal said its call for capacity subscriptions currently ongoing will enter its final binding phase in October 2019.

LNG Journal editor

Royal Vopak, the Dutch global storage and terminals company and co-owner of the Gate liquefied natural gas import facility in Rotterdam, has purchased a stake in the floating LNG terminal in the Colombian Caribbean port of Cartagena.

Vopak said it bought 49 percent of Colombian company Sociedad Portuaria el Cayao (SPEC) in Cartagena, owner of the terminal which has been in service since 2016. The value of the transaction was not disclosed.

Mexico

The Dutch company also owns 60 percent of the Mexican Gulf Coast onshore LNG import terminal at Altamira.

The Colombian facility consists of an LNG jetty, onshore infrastructure and 9.2 kilometres of gas pipeline connecting to the national gas grid.

A chartered floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) is receiving the LNG and sending the gas to shore. The SPEC company holds long-term supply contracts with three local gas-fired power plants.

The FSRU, the 170,050 cubic metres capacity vessel “Hoegh Grace”, is on charter from Norwegian fleet owner Hoegh LNG.

The majority shareholder in the terminal company will remain the South American utility Promigas with 51 percent.

“We are very much looking forward to this partnership with Promigas and to enter into the growing Colombian LNG market,” said Eelco Hoekstra, Chairman and Chief Executive of Vopak.

“This is another growth step in our LNG portfolio and it fits very well in our ambitions to grow and diversify our service offering in LNG,” added Hoekstra. Promigas is a private company in the natural gas sector in Latin America with 45 years of experience providing access to natural gas

Woodside Petroleum, a shareholder in the Kitimat LNG export project in the Canadian province of British Columbia with US major Chevron Corp., said at a conference in Abu Dhabi that the Perth, Australia-based company would be interested in selling part of its Kitimat stake to a third party.

LNG Journal editor

Australian company Western Gas said its Equus project in Western Australia was on track for first gas in 2024 following the completion of the upstream and LNG development plans as the company seeks a partner and starts financing activities.

The liquefied natural gas fuel filling station network in the Nordic countries is growing with Finnish energy company Gasum opening its third station in Sweden and with plans to enter the road transport fuel market in Norway.

Gasum said the new Swedish station offers LNG and liquefied biogas for heavy-duty vehicles in the town of Orebro, where Gasum also has a biogas plant.

The Finnish natural gas company has set itself a 2019 goal of expanding its filling station network for heavy-duty vehicles to 20 stations, with 12 of the stations located in Sweden.

Gasum hopes to have a network for 50 liquefied gas filling stations for all vehicles by the early 2020s.

“Heavy road transport is increasing and today represents around 30 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions in the EU road transport sector,” Gasum claimed.

“Replacing traditional fuels with alternative low-emission fuel options is quickly becoming the norm throughout the road transport sector, as well as in other industries,” Gasum noted.

The company said customer demand for cleaner fuels for heavy-duty vehicles is increasing rapidly, which is why Gasum, together with its partners, was focusing on developing the gas infrastructure and filling station network in the region.

“For logistics (trucking) companies, LNG and LBG are a necessity in the transition to a carbon neutral future. At the same time, they enable significant savings in fuel costs,” said Mikael Antonsson, a transport director at Gasum Sweden.

According to recent European Union legislation, the average CO2 emissions of new trucks needs to be 15 percent lower by 2025 compared with 2019 and at least 30 percent lower by 2030.

Furthermore, Sweden has set a national target to reduce CO2 emissions from domestic traffic by at least 70 percent by 2030.

“With the use of LNG, CO2 emissions can be reduced by approximately 20 percent compared to traditional fuels and with LBG the reduction is as much as 85 percent,” said Gasum.

LNG Journal editor

Brittany Ferries, the French line that links the UK with Spain and France, has celebrated the launch of its cruise-ferry “Galicia” and the start of work on another LNG-powered vessel, the

“Salamanca”, at the Avic Weihai shipyard in Shandong in eastern China.

The newbuilds are part of the Breton company’s 550 million euros ($607M) fleet renewal programme.

Australia is reaching the end of its surge in LNG investment, with multiple new projects commissioned since 2007 and this was mirrored in other regions, most notably in North America where investment decisions were taken for 10 projects, the most recent being the Shell-led LNG Canada.