(Reuters) – All three liquefaction trains at Freeport LNG’s export plant in Texas were expected to be back in service on Monday, according to preliminary data from financial firm LSEG.
Freeport told environmental regulators that liquefaction Train 2 tripped while operating around midday on Nov. 22 due to an issue with a compressor system, resulting in an emissions event that lasted almost nine hours.
That was the second train to shut at the plant in the past week. Liquefaction Train 3 shut on Nov. 20 due to an issue with a lube oil pump, resulting in an emission event that lasted more than 11 hours.
Freeport on Monday declined to comment on the outages.
The plant has had several outages this year and is the least reliable of all of the U.S. LNG export facilities.
Freeport LNG is one of the most closely watched LNG export plants in the world because the start and stop of its operations often cause massive price swings in global natural gas prices.
U.S. gas futures were up about 7% on Monday due mostly to forecasts for cold weather that should boost heating demand in coming weeks.
But energy traders noted that an increase in the amount of gas expected to flow to U.S. LNG export plants, especially Freeport, was also supporting U.S. gas prices on Monday.
The amount of gas flowing to the seven big operating U.S. LNG export plants has risen to an average of 13.5 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in November, up from 13.1 bcfd in October, according to LSEG data.
Flows to the 2.1-bcfd Freeport plant were on track to rise to 2.0 bcfd on Monday, up from 1.3 bcfd on Sunday and an average of 1.8 bcfd over the prior seven days.
Each train at Freeport is capable of turning around 0.7 bcfd of gas into LNG daily.
One billion cubic feet of gas is enough to supply about five million U.S. homes for a day.
Reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York and additional reporting by Curtis Williams in Houston; editing by Jonathan Oatis Editing by Bernadette Baum and Paul Simao
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