U.S. energy regulators approved Kinder Morgan Inc’s application to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility at its Gulf LNG plant in Mississippi:
* The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) said in a filing late on Tuesday that the new export terminal will include two liquefaction trains with the capacity to export a total of 10.85 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of LNG or 1.45 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of natural gas.
* One billion cubic feet of natural gas is enough to supply about 5 million U.S. homes for a day.
* The company has not yet made a final investment decision to build the plant, which would be located at its existing LNG import terminal in Jackson County.
* “While this is an important step, there are still multiple factors that need to be met before reaching a final investment decision needed to begin this project,” Kinder spokeswoman Katherine Hill said in an email.
* Gulf LNG is one of more than four dozen LNG export terminals under development in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
* The United States has quickly become one of the biggest LNG exporters in the world as more countries use gas to meet rising energy use and bridge their transition from dirty coal to clean renewables. Gas emits about half the carbon dioxide emissions when burned as coal.
* At the start of 2016, before Cheniere Energy Inc sent out the first cargo from Sabine Pass in Louisiana, the United States was exporting no LNG. An LNG export plant in Alaska was mothballed in 2015.
* In 2018, the United States became the fourth-biggest LNG exporter in the world after Qatar, Australia and Malaysia, and in 2024, the country is expected to become the world’s biggest LNG exporter.
* Just looking the plants currently under construction, U.S. LNG export capacity is expected to rise to 7.4 bcfd by the end of 2019 and 10.0 bcfd in 2020 from 6.4 bcfd now.