Page 10 - GLNG Week 10 2022

GLNG AMERICAS GLNG

Venture Global expands supply

partnership with Shell

PROJECTS & VENTURE Global LNG announced on March The announcement came on the same day
COMPANIES 7 that it had struck a new long-term sales and that Shell announced its intention to exit all of its
purchase agreement (SPA) with Shell for offtake Russian oil and gas investments in a phased man-
from its proposed Plaquemines liquefaction ter- ner in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
minal on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. Shell is the world’s largest trader of LNG.
The 20-year deal covers 2mn tonnes per year Meanwhile, the European Union has unveiled
and brings Shell’s total long-term offtake com- plans to reduce its Russian gas imports by two-
mitments from Venture Global’s terminals to thirds within a year. This push will be a boon to
4mn tpy. Shell’s existing contract with Venture US LNG producers, including Venture Global, as
Global covers 2mn tpy from its newly built Cal- they advance plans to expand their liquefaction
casieu Pass LNG terminal, also in Louisiana, capacity.
which shipped its first cargo at the start of March. Another US LNG producer, Cheniere Energy,
The 10mn tpy Calcasieu Pass terminal took is also moving forward with its latest expansion
29 months to go from a final investment decision project. On March 7, the company awarded a
(FID) to production, according to Venture Global, lump-sum turnkey (LSTK) engineering, pro-
breaking a record for construction of a large-scale curement and construction (EPC) contract to
greenfield LNG facility. The company is now seek- Bechtel for the Stage III expansion at its Corpus
ing to replicate the process on a larger scale by Christi LNG terminal in Texas.
building the 20mn tpy Plaquemines LNG plant. This follows an announcement from
“Venture Global is committed to bringing Cheniere in late February that it was expanding
low-cost US LNG online quickly, helping to keep an agreement with EOG Resources to supply
the global market well supplied, while meeting natural gas to Corpus Christi Stage III for use as
our customers’ growing energy and climate feedstock. Cheniere has said the deal effectively
goals,” stated Venture Global’s CEO, Mike Sabel. completes the commercialisation of Stage III.™

Hackers reported to have targeted

US LNG industry in February

PROJECTS & HACKERS are reported to have gained access the attackers had already done.
COMPANIES to computers belonging to current and former According to Yoo, in some cases, the hackers
employees of major US natural gas suppliers and compromised the target machines themselves,
exporters in mid-February. and in others they bought access to specific
Citing exclusively shared research from Rese- computers that had already been infected by
curity, which discovered the operation, Bloomb- others, offering up to $15,000 for access to each
erg reported that 21 companies involved in the machine.
production of LNG had been targeted in the The motive for the attack is unknown, but
cyberattack. Resecurity launched an investiga- Bloomberg noted that the cyberattack occurred
tion last month after identifying a small num- on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and
ber of hackers. Among them was one linked to a coincided with broader changes in the energy
wave of attacks in 2018 against European organ- industry that had been accelerated by the war.
isations that Microsoft attributed to a hacking “Recent tensions around Nord Stream 2,
group associated with Russia’s GRU military global market changes, as well as conflict in
intelligence service. Ukraine are obvious catalysts,” Yoo said. He
Resecurity’s CEO, Gene Yoo, told Bloomberg told the news service he believed the attack had
that the hackers were seeking to pay on the dark been carried out by state-sponsored hackers but
web for access to personal computers belonging declined to speculate further.
to workers at major US gas companies, which Targeted companies are reported to have
were used to gain access to those companies’ included leading US LNG producer Cheniere
networks. He added that Resecurity’s research- Energy, Chevron, EQT and Kinder Morgan,
ers had located the hackers’ servers and found a which operates the country’s largest gas pipe-
vulnerability in the software. This allowed them line network and the Elba Island LNG terminal
to obtain files from the machines and see what in Georgia.™

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 10 11•March•2022