(Adds Freeport statement)
March 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. energy regulator on
Wednesday granted Freeport LNG's request to return to service
the last of its three gas liquefaction units and phase 1
facilities at its export plant in Texas.
In February, the LNG export facility, the second-biggest in
the United States, started to exit an eight-month outage that
was caused by a fire in June 2022, and restarted its second
liquefaction unit last week.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) order said
Freeport can produce liquefied natural gas (LNG) up to the
maximum authorized capacity of 782 billion cubic feet (bcf) per
year, or about 2.14 bcf per day.
Freeport said it had returned two of its three liquefaction
trains to full commercial operations in recent weeks, producing
more than 1.5 bcf per day.
"A conservative ramp-up profile to establish full
three-train production is anticipated to occur over the next few
weeks," Freeport said in a statement.
The amount of natural gas flowing to the plant was on
track to reach just 0.1 bcf per day on Wednesday, down from 1.0
bcf per day on Tuesday, according to Refinitiv Eikon data.
"As the recommissioning of Freeport’s liquefaction facility
continues and trains are restarted, changes in feed gas flows
and production rates are to be anticipated, given the duration
of the plant’s outage," Freeport said.
Earlier this week, FERC had sought more information from the
LNG export company to evaluate its request for its phase 1
restart, which includes three liquefaction units, two storage
tanks, and one LNG loading dock.
(Reporting by Harshit Verma and Deep Vakil in Bengaluru;
Editing by David Gregorio and Grant McCool)
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