Page 12 - NorthAmOil Week 08 2023

NorthAmOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES NorthAmOil

Freeport LNG receives approval

for partial restart of two units

TEXAS THE US’ second-largest LNG export facility information about operations and staffing.
received approval on February 21 from the Fed- A review revealed that the explosion at the
eral Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to facility was the result of inadequate operating
partially restart operations after being idled since and testing procedures and operator fatigue, as
an explosion and fire in June. well as other shortcomings. Freeport LNG has
Freeport LNG received the go-ahead from responded by increasing employee numbers by
regulators for the partial restart of two of its three 30%.
gas liquefaction trains, two storage tanks and a The US would have surpassed Australia as
single tanker berth, according to Reuters. the world’s largest LNG exporter in 2022 if the
However, the restart of the third liquefac- Quintana Island-based Freeport LNG terminal
tion train will require additional permission, had not been shut down by the fire. The facility
the FERC said. It is now expected to be several produces around 15mn tonnes per year (tpy) of
weeks before the terminal can begin operating at LNG, which is exported to countries in Europe
its full capacity of 2bn cubic feet (56.6mn cubic and Asia, where demand for the super-chilled
metres) per day. Meanwhile, Freeport LNG fuel is rising.
revealed in a statement that a third storage tank The outage also caused LNG prices to spike
and second tanker berth would not be available in the summer of 2022, with futures prices in
before May. Europe climbing to $60 per million British ther-
The announcement marks a key step forward mal units ($1,659.60 per 1,000 cubic metres) in
for Freeport LNG, which had initially sought to July. Meanwhile, Freeport’s major clients includ-
resume partial operations in October but was ing Japan’s JERA and Osaka Gas suffered hun-
denied by investigators, who demanded more dreds of millions of dollars in losses.™

Chevron to deliver eight cargoes of

Venezuelan oil to US this month

US-VENEZUELA US super-major Chevron is on track to send crude to Valero in early February.
eight cargoes of Venezuelan crude oil to the US Meanwhile, Chevron is loading tankers this
in February, with delivery volumes averaging month with crude oil that has been in storage for
more than 100,000 barrels per day (bpd), accord- several years, since the imposition of sanctions of
ing to a report from Reuters. Venezuela’s hydrocarbon industry by the admin-
The news agency noted on February 16, cit- istration of US President Donald Trump in early
ing shipping data and documents, that Chevron 2019. Most of those volumes were extracted by
had already loaded and shipped three cargoes of Petroboscan and Petropiar, Chevron’s main joint
Venezuelan crude to US ports. Five additional ventures with Venezuela’s national oil company
tankers are waiting to be filled with oil for ship- (NOC) PdVSA.
ment to the same destinations before the end of Both of the ventures cut production sig-
the month, it said. nificantly following the introduction of the
Reuters did not identify these destinations sanctions regime, but they have been expand-
by name. According to previous reports, the ing upstream operations since late November
US company has been sending most of its Ven- of last year, when the US State Department
ezuelan oil to its refinery in Pascagoula, Missis- granted Chevron a temporary exemption from
sippi. It has also been saying since mid-January, the trade restrictions. Under the document
though, that it is ready to deliver Venezuelan granting that six-month exemption, known as
feedstock to oil-processing plants and termi- General Law 41 (GL 41), the company has the
nals owned by other companies in the US Gulf right to take an expanded role in four Vene-
Coast (USGC) region. It began executing that zuelan JVs involved in the production, refining
plan almost immediately by arranging to sell and export of petroleum products, as well as
Venezuelan crude to Phillips 66 and then fol- the right to import oil and fuel produced by
lowed by executing a shipment of Venezuelan these companies to the US.™

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 08 23•February•2023