The U.S. Just Approved Four More LNG Projects

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved on Thursday another four liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, which will add to the growing American LNG exports in coming years.

FERC approved, with conditions, three projects planned to be located along the Brownsville Ship Channel in Brownsville, Texas—Texas LNG Brownsville, Rio Grande LNG Terminal, and Annova LNG Brownsville—as well as a fourth project to expand an operating facility near Corpus Christi, Texas.

All four projects have applied before the U.S. Department of Energy to be authorized to export gas to countries that don’t have free trade agreements with the United States.

Today’s approvals add to the approval of seven other LNG projects this year.

“The Commission has now completed its work on applications for 11 LNG export projects in the past nine months, helping the United States expand the availability of natural gas for our global allies who need access to an efficient, affordable and environmentally friendly fuel for power generation,” FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee said in a statement.

The United States will be the global leader in newly built LNG liquefaction capacity between 2019 and 2023, data and analytics company GlobalData said last month. The increase in the U.S. of 157 million tons per year (mtpa) of liquefaction capacity will account for 73 percent of total global LNG capacity growth through 2023, according to GlobalData.   

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In the first half of 2019, the U.S. saw its net natural gas exports more than double from the same period last year, thanks to more LNG export capacity coming online in recent months, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The United States, which exports natural gas via pipelines to neighbors Canada and Mexico and exports LNG to several other countries, became a net natural gas exporter on an annual basis in 2017, for the first time in nearly 60 years.

A large part of the recent increase in U.S. natural gas exports is due to a growing number of LNG facilities coming online. U.S. exports of LNG jumped by 37 percent in the first half of 2019 compared to the first half of 2018, according to EIA data.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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