Kinder Morgan Reports Delay in Georgia Project's Start Up

The Elba Liquefaction Project near Savannah, Ga., will be starting up a bit later than anticipated, co-developer Kinder Morgan, Inc. (KMI) reported Wednesday.

The nearly $2 billion project’s initial in-service should now occur in the fourth rather than third quarter of 2018, KMI stated in its Second Quarter 2018 earnings press release. KMI, which is adding processing and liquefaction facilities to the existing Southern LNG Co. complex at Ela Island in a joint venture with EIG Global Energy Partners, added that final units should go online by the third quarter of 2019. Once the full project concludes, the Elba Island facility will boast approximately 2.5 million tonnes per year of liquefaction capacity, the company stated.

According to KMI’s project website, the 10-train project will boast 350 million cubic feet per day (MMcfd) of total LNG output and is being developed over two phases. Phase I entails installing six liquefaction units (total output capacity of 210 MMcfd) and modifying the terminal to facilitate LNG exports. The second phase involves the addition of up to four more trains with an output capacity of 140 MMcfd, the company noted. Shell is the customer for 100 percent of the project’s liquefaction capacity and ship-loading services, according to engineering, procurement and construction contractor IHI E&C. The Elba Island facility will incorporate Shell’s small-scale Moveable Modular Liquefaction System (MMLS), KMI states elsewhere on its website.

On Wednesday KMI also reported that “construction is continuing as planned” on its Elba Express Modification Project. Under that project, KMI is adding upstream compression facilities to its 200-mile bidirectional Elba Express pipeline so that the Elba Island terminal will have feed gas for liquefaction.

Elba Island will be the second LNG export terminal on the U.S. East Coast when the KMI-EIG project concludes. Earlier this year, Dominion began liquefaction operations from its Cove Point terminal on Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.