NO. 1: The Freeport LNG Development LP terminal on the upper Texas coast remained offline on Thursday for the fifth day in a row since it was shuttered on Sunday ahead of former Hurricane Beryl.
CenterPoint Energy Inc., which provides nearly 700 MW for the facility, reported that nearly 40% of its customers in Brazoria County, where Freeport is located, were still without power. CenterPoint’s restoration map showed early Thursday that post-storm assessments were completed on Quintana Island, home to the terminal, but electricity had not been restored there.
Freeport nominated 100 MMcf of feed gas on Thursday, lower than the 150 MMcf nominated the day before. The 2.1 Bcf/d facility had nominated 1.6 Bcf before it was shut down Sunday. Kpler vessel-tracking data on Thursday still showed five ships offshore near Freeport.
Beryl made landfall about 50 miles away from Freeport as a Category 1 hurricane and was later downgraded. The storm impacted more than two million power customers in the Greater Houston region and about half were still awaiting restoration on Thursday. CenterPoint CEO Jason Wells said Thursday during a hearing before the Public Utility Commission of Texas that roughly 500,000 customers could still be without power until next week.
NO. 2: Three sales and purchase agreements were signed this week to secure supplies for consumers in Europe and Asia.
Switzerland-based energy company MET Group agreed to purchase U.S. liquefied natural gas from Shell plc. The company did not disclose the volume, but said it would serve its customers in Europe, where MET has regasification capacity in Croatia, Germany and Spain.
Australian LNG producer Woodside Energy Group Ltd. also said it would supply Taiwan’s CPC Corp. with 6 million metric tons (mmt) for 10 years beginning this month. The company said it would provide CPC with volumes from its global portfolio, and could ultimately supply 8.4 mmty for another 10 years from 2034 to 2043.
Elsewhere, Chinese power producer Shenzhen Energy Group Co. Ltd. signed a long-term deal to buy LNG from commodity trader Glencore plc. It did not disclose any terms.
NO. 3: LNG modules headed for PAO Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 project were reportedly returned to China only days before their arrival at the site in Russia’s Far North.
The modules were reportedly returned to Wison New Energies’ Zhoushan yard amid sanctions imposed by the United States against the 19.8 mmty Arctic LNG 2 project. The modules were returned only weeks after Wison said it would stop work on all Russian projects.
The sanctions were imposed to curb revenue for Russia’s war in Ukraine. They have impacted output from Arctic LNG 2, which brought online its first 6.6 mmty train last December. Reuters reported earlier this year that Novatek was considering scaling back the project to focus on another in Murmansk.
