NO. 1: The Southern Environmental Law Center and the Natural Resources Defense Council have filed a court challenge against FERC’s authorization of the proposed CP2 LNG export project in Cameron Parish, LA.
The groups filed the petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (DC Circuit) on behalf of local fishermen and landowners. They allege the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s June approval of the 20 million metric tons/year liquefied natural gas project violates the Natural Gas Act and “illustrates FERC’s failure” to review projects in the public interest.
The DC Circuit vacated FERC authorizations for the Rio Grande and Texas LNG projects after challenges from other environmental groups.
Venture Global LNG Inc.’s CP2 waited 10 months for approval at FERC – the longest of any export project – as the Commission conducted an extended analysis of the facility’s proposed air emissions. Environmental groups have staunchly opposed the CP2 project as it is one of the most likely of any planned large-scale projects to be sanctioned. Venture Global already operates the nearby Calcasieu Pass Terminal in Louisiana, which started shipping cargoes in 2022.
NO. 2: Train 1 at Shell plc’s Queensland Curtis LNG export plant on Australia’s east coast remained offline Thursday after it tripped earlier in the week. Another liquefaction unit that had been offline has since been restarted.
Outages are mounting in the region. Train 2 at Inpex Corp.’s Ichthys LNG terminal in the northern part of the country was shut down last month after a gas leak. The company said the liquefaction unit would not be restarted until October.
Both Shell and Inpex have tapped into the spot market to make up for lost cargoes following the outages.
[Overcoming obstacles in the LNG market: NGI sits down with Baker Botts' Jason Bennett, department chair of global projects, to discuss U.S. LNG projects and the hurdles they currently face. Despite those obstacles cropping up, global demand for LNG is going nowhere, and the U.S. remains a prime supplier. Find out more from NGI’s Hub & Flow podcast.]
Elsewhere, Train 1 at Woodside Energy Group Ltd.’s North West Shelf facility in Western Australia is down for planned maintenance until Sept. 28.
NO. 3: European natural gas prices finally stopped falling Thursday after a one-week selloff when prices fell below $12/MMBtu.
The Title Transfer Facility hit a one-month low in intraday trading Thursday before gaining 1% to settle at $11.74/MMBtu.
Rising LNG imports, coupled with storage inventories that are nearly full have offset concerns over geopolitical instability. Japan-Korea Marker prices have also dipped below $13 this week.
Rystad Energy analyst Masanori Odaka said the market has already factored in maintenance and outages at Australian export plants, along with maintenance work in Norway that has cut gas exports to Europe by nearly 50% week-over-week.
