Diversified Produces More Gas in WV Than Any Other State; Eyes LNG

WV News recently interviewed two high-level employees of Diversified Energy—Darren Gibbs, vice president of marketing, and Ron Ridgway, executive vice president for energy marketing. While we expected the typical expressions of support for the company and the oil and gas industry, we were delighted to gain some insights into the company’s thinking and strategy that we did not previously know. We were also surprised to learn that Diversified produces more natural gas in West Virginia than it does in any of the other states where it operates. Read More “Diversified Produces More Gas in WV Than Any Other State; Eyes LNG”

Last week, a new company entered the U.S. LNG export market. Coastal Bend LNG, a privately held energy infrastructure development company, announced it has initiated the development of a 22.5 million ton per annum (MTPA) natural gas liquefaction and export facility on the Texas Gulf Coast. The company plans to file an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) this year. If the full vision is realized (22.5 MTPA), it will become the second-largest LNG export plant in the U.S., behind Cheniere Energy’s 29.5 MTPA Sabine Pass facility.
Freeport LNG, located near Galveston, Texas, currently exports roughly 15 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of LNG from three trains—when it’s actually up and running. The Freeport facility has been plagued with outages, the most spectacular of which happened in June 2022, taking the facility offline for 10 months (see 

Commonwealth LNG received major news this week from two different government agencies. The first bit of news was a final authorization from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to proceed with building the $11 billion project in Cameron, Louisiana. The second bit of news was a final authorization to export to countries without a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, granted by the Department of Energy (DOE). Commonwealth still plans to make a final investment decision (FID) on the project in the third quarter of this year. 
The Japanese certainly want to stay on the good side of Donald Trump regarding trade. Yesterday, JERA Co., Inc., Japan’s largest power generation company, joined U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright (the Chair and Vice Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council, respectively), along with Shigeo Yamada, Ambassador of Japan to the United States, to announce that the company has finalized several 20-year agreements to procure up to 5.5 million tonnes per year (MTPA) of LNG from the United States. 

We need a scorecard to keep track of all the ups and downs at the problem-plagued Freeport LNG export facility, located near Galveston, Texas. We don’t think it’s a stretch to say the plant, which is the third-largest LNG export plant in the U.S., has been down almost as much as it has been up since first coming online in 2019 (