Signs of Progress at Freeport LNG

There were “signs of progress” at Freeport LNG in the week commencing January 23 as the facility “sought and received approvals for the first phase of the restart process”, Rystad Energy Analyst Ade Allen outlined in a market note sent to Rigzone recently.

“The facility can now begin cooling down some piping and re-instate boil-off-gas (BOG), which is expected to take 11 days, the first in a series of approvals required for restarting the facility,” Allen said in the note.

“Our expected timeline for restart remains mid-March. We expect it will take about 60 days from restart to 100 percent utilization (2.35 billion cubic feet per day),” Allen added.

In the note, Allen stated that Freeport LNG had already passed its previously announced restart date of mid-January.

“The actual restart date is still shrouded in mystery, as market watchers speculate on minimal evidence or activity,” Allen said.

Rigzone asked Freeport LNG for comment on Allen’s note and for any updates on a restart date. In response, a Freeport LNG spokesperson told Rigzone, “we have no comment on this or any other market speculation or rumors”. 

On December 23, 2022, Freeport LNG stated that it did not anticipate commencing the initial restart of its liquefaction facility until the second half of January 2023.

In a statement sent to Rigzone on February 1, Bill Farren-Price, director of Enverus Intelligence Research, revealed that “unseasonably warm weather, record high supply and delays to the Freeport LNG restart” had inflated the company’s end of winter natural gas storage estimate.

“This higher storage projection worsens the oversupply already expected for midyear, pushing our summer price forecast down by as much as $1/MMBtu from previous outlooks,” Farren-Price said in the statement.  

Freeport LNG notes on its website that its three train, 15 million ton per annum liquefaction facility is the seventh largest in the world and second largest in the United States.

On June 8, 2022, a statement posted on Freeport LNG’s official Facebook page announced that an incident had occurred at the Freeport LNG facility on Quintana Island at about 11.40 am. An update posted on the company’s Facebook page on the same day revealed that the incident had been stabilized and that the company was in the early stages of its investigation of the event.

To contact the author, email andreas.exarheas@rigzone.com