LNG

Jul 21 - The $18.5 billion Santos-led Gladstone LNG project, in which Total and Petronas each have has a 27.5% stake, needs more gas to get off the ground, according to Total's head of upstream oil and gas, Yves-Louis Darricarrere.

"We need and we are ready to buy (more gas) but there is a price limit and it is not really economical (at the moment)," he told Australian media, raising doubt on whether the GLNG project's two trains on Curtis Island can be realised realized as planned.
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Arrow, which has abandoned plans for a stand-alone LNG plant at Gladstone, had been courted by GLNG but no deal is imminent. As an alternative to buying third party gas, GLNG was looking at acquiring more Queensland exploration ground, Darricarrere said.

Californian project developer SCT&E LNG has tripled volumes in its Free Trade Application (FTA) to the Department of Energy from 4 to 12 mtpa of LNG to be exported from Monkey Island, Louisiana.

Corpus Christi Liquefaction, a Cheniere Energy's subsidiary, has agreed to sell Électricité de France about 0.38 mtpa of LNG upon startup of Train 2 of the liquefaction facility being developed near Corpus Christi, Texas. Sales will increase to once Train 3 starts operation as early as 2019.

Project partners in North America rush to bring LNG to market before the Pacific Basin will be awash with Australian cargoes. However, scope for a second wave of projects is limited down under once the ongoing dozen projects are completed, the Economist Intelligence Units' lead energy analyst, Peter Kiernan, told LNG Journal. 

July 17 - US construction company Bechtel has delivered and installed all modules for the first of two LNG trains at the GLNG Project on Curtis Island, Queensland.

Train 1 is made up of 82 modules that were built at a Bechtel-managed module yard facility in the Philippines and transported to Curtis Island over the past 19 periods. Work on the modules for Train 2 is still underway and scheduled to be delivered and installed later his year.

As Asian utility buyers have covered their summer LNG demand, Qatargas is diverting more cargoes to the UK, adding length to an oversupplied market which is likely to exacerbate the 28% drop in gas prices at the NBP since April.

Regulatory findings that Kysuhu Electric Power could safely restart two Japanese nuclear reactors are expected to have merely a marginal effect on the price paid for LNG imports, analysts said. For prices to fall significantly, more of the country's 46 reactors would have to resume operations.

July 16 - Fluor Corporation has won a contract by Gate Terminal BV, a subsidiary of Dutch Vopak and Gasunie, to design and build a LNG break bulk terminal in Rotterdam.

Break bulk terminals split up large-scale LNG shipments into smaller quantities to facilitate the distribution of LNG to be used as fuel for ships and heavy trucks.

Fluor will undertake EPC services for the jetty, loading facilities, boil-off gas compressors, connection to the LNG import terminal and other facilities.

July 16 - South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) has teamed up with classification service provider ABS to jointly develop and build a LNG fuelled drillship.

"We are targeting the Gulf of Mexico as a key market for an LNG fuelled drillship where, given the abundance of affordable shale gas resources in the US, LNG as a marine fuel makes good economic sense," said ABS Vice President, Dr. Hoseong Lee.

Australia's Hastings Funds Management will divest its 25% stake in Freeport LNG Development L.P. to specialist fund Global Infrastructure Partners, who agreed to pay $850 million - over five times more than what Hastings paid for years ago.