Kinder Morgan Inc. asked U.S. energy regulators for permission to put the fourth liquefaction train in service at its nearly $2 billion Elba Island LNG export plant in Georgia.
Kinder Morgan has said it expects one 0.3 million-tonne-per-annum (MTPA) LNG train to enter service about each month through the summer of 2020 when all 10 trains should be operating.
Kinder Morgan said train 2 would be ready for service on Jan. 16, according to a filing with the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Jan. 13.
Train 2 would be the fourth train to enter service at the plant. Units 1, 3 and 4 were already operating. The first of 10 trains at Elba—train 1—entered service in early October.
The first export cargo from Elba left in December.
Elba, which is 51% owned by units of Kinder Morgan and 49% by EIG Global Energy Partners, is designed to liquefy about 2.5 MTPA of LNG, equivalent to around 0.350 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas.
One billion cubic feet is enough gas to fuel about 5 million U.S. homes for a day.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc has a 20-year contract to use the facility.
Including projects under construction, U.S. LNG export capacity is expected to rise to 9.6 Bcf/d by the end of 2020 and 10.3 Bcf/d by the end of 2021 from 7.6 Bcf/d now.
That keeps the United States on track to become the world’s biggest LNG exporter in 2024. It became the third-biggest LNG exporter in 2019, behind Qatar and Australia.
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