NO. 1: Freeport LNG Development LP said Train 3 at its export plant on the upper Texas coast tripped offline late Tuesday due to an issue with the ventilation flow meter. The train, which only recently came back online after a lengthy outage, was restarted Wednesday, according to a regulatory filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Feed gas flows to the facility dropped significantly Wednesday and were nominated at below 180 MMcf/d on Thursday. The facility has been using about half of its 2.6 Bcf/d of feed gas capacity.
Two of Freeport’s three trains are expected to be offline intermittently through at least May for inspections and repairs. Train 3 was restarted in March after a months-long outage caused by electrical issues during extreme cold in January.
NO. 2: Russian strikes again targeted Ukrainian natural gas storage facilities. State-run Naftogaz said two underground caverns were targeted early Thursday.
“Operations are ongoing as specialists address the aftermath of the shelling,” the company said. It is the fourth time the country’s gas storage facilities have been hit, including an attack late last month.
European traders use Ukrainian storage for excess supplies. The capacity could be particularly important this refilling season as other storage facilities on the continent are fuller than normal. Ukraine has the most natural gas storage capacity in Europe.
The strikes also hit the largest power plant in the Kyiv region and helped send the European natural gas benchmark Title Transfer Facility prompt contract up by 10% on Thursday to finish above $9.00/MMBtu.
NO. 3: China National Petroleum Corp. said it would continue to expand its liquefied natural gas shipping fleet as it expands its trading role in the global gas market.
Deputy General Manager Wang Haiyan reportedly told a conference in Beijing this week that the company’s fleet would expand to 25 ships by 2030. The company currently has six vessels.
State-owned Chinese companies have moved more aggressively into the spot market in recent years after securing more volumes under long-term contacts. They’ve added regasification capacity in end-use markets and added more shipping.
According to Kpler data, the country re-exported a record 0.98 million tons (Mt) of LNG last year, up from 0.56 Mt in 2022 and 0.07 Mt in 2019, the only other years China reloaded cargoes for sale to international buyers. The reloads signaled not only a shift into the spot market, but portfolio optimization amid higher prices and weaker domestic demand during the country’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
