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GLNG: Outages and new plans Latin America: Permian gas to Mexico
Equinor’s Melkoeya LNG terminal in Hammer- This week’s LatAmOil examines Mexico’s grow-
fest, Norway is expected to resume output on ing importance as a market for unconventional
January 1, 2021, having gone offline after it was and associated gas from the US Permian Basin.
damaged in a fire last month, the company said New pipelines are already benefiting CFE, the
in a regulatory statement on October 12. The fire national power provider, by pumping more gas
occurred in one of the plant’s electricity-gener- to the Mexican domestic markets, and they will
ating turbines on September 28 and was extin- also support the establishment of new export
guished the same day. facilities capable of serving Asian and South
This is one of several LNG facilities globally American markets.
to be dealing with an unplanned outage recently. In related news, industry experts believe
One of the most notable is Chevron’s Gorgon that Mexico’s government may have launched US-based
LNG terminal in Australia, where one train its annual oil hedging deal. Details are scarce,
remains offline while cracks in propane heat though, as Mexican officials are working hard NextDecade will
exchangers are being repaired. The other two to keep information about the hedge secret this target carbon
Gorgon trains are scheduled to go offline next year.
year – though not both at the same time – and Further south, Ecuador’s government is hop- neutrality at its
will be inspected for similar weld quality issues ing to sign another oil-backed loan deal with
to the ones that required repairs in Train 2. China in November. According to Rene Ortiz, proposed Rio
In the US, meanwhile, Cameron LNG had the Minister of Energy and Non-Renewable
only just resumed exports, having been shut Natural Resources, Quito intends to use the pro- Grande LNG
down by Hurricane Laura in late August only to ceeds of the $1.4bn credit to restructure some of terminal
go offline again as Hurricane Delta made land- its existing debts.
fall on the Louisiana coast. But operator Sempra In Guyana, ExxonMobil (US) has extended
Energy reported on October 12 that it had sus- its contract with Noble Corp. (UK) for the use of
tained no damage from the latest storm, adding a drillship known as the Noble Tom Madden at
that it had been determined that it was safe to the Stabroek block offshore Guyana. The exten-
restart production at the plant. sion, which pushes the end date of the contract
These outages may actually be viewed as wel- back from mid-February of 2024 to mid-August
come by the LNG industry more broadly, as the of 2030, follows closely on the heels of the US
sector continues to grapple with oversupply that super-major’s decision to proceed with devel-
buyers are struggling to absorb. Despite this, var- opment work at Payara. This field is now due to
ious companies are continuing to move towards become the third producing section of Stabroek
the approval of new liquefaction capacity. in 2024.
Notably, last week US-based NextDecade Meanwhile, Brazil’s national oil company
announced that it would target carbon neutral- (NOC) Petrobras is reportedly in talks with a
ity at its proposed Rio Grande LNG terminal, consortium made up of Brazil’s 3R Petroleum
on which a final investment decision (FID) is and the Norwegian-Brazilian company DBO
targeted for 2021. NextDecade said it would use Energy on the sale of Peroa, an offshore cluster
a combination of carbon capture and storage that includes the Malombe field.
(CCS) and “proprietary processes” to achieve If the deal goes forward, it will be among the
carbon neutrality at the 27mn tonne per year first to include assets that only contain natural
(tpy) Rio Grande facility. gas and not oil.

If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping If you’d like to read more about the key events shaping
the global LNG sector then please click here for the Latin American oil and gas sector then please click
NewsBase’s GLNG Monitor. here for NewsBase’s LatAmOil Monitor.

Week 41 14•October•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P9