Freeport LNG plant in Texas is on track to end outage due to increased natgas flow

Data from LSEG showed that the natural gas flow to Freeport LNG’s export facility in Texas was set to increase on Thursday, after a power outage during a winterstorm forced it to close on Tuesday.

Freeport is among the most closely monitored LNG export plants around the world, as the start-up or halting its operations can cause large price swings on global gas markets.

Gas prices in the U.S. typically drop when flows to Freeport decrease due to the lower demand from the export plant for the fuel. Prices in Europe tend to increase because of a reduction in LNG supplies to global markets.

This is what happened to global gas prices this week.

The financial firm LSEG reported that the amount of LNG flowing to eight large U.S. export plants has risen from 14.4 billion cubic feet per days (bcfd), to 14.8 bcfd on average so far in January. This compares to a monthly high of 14.7 billion cubic feet per day in December 2023.

After the Freeport plant shut down on Tuesday, LNG feedgas production was expected to reach 12.7 bcfd per day on Thursday. This is up from a 11-week-low of 11.6bcfd recorded on Wednesday.

According to LSEG, flows to Freeport are on track to reach 0.5 bcfd by Thursday. They were near zero on Wednesday and Tuesday. The plant's flows averaged around 1.9 billion cubic feet per day over the previous week.

A billion cubic feet of natural gas can supply 5 million U.S. households for one day. (Reporting and editing by Scott DiSavino)

(source: Reuters)