Every Week Freeport LNG Delayed Takes 4 LNG Cargoes Off Market
The 2 Bcf/d Freeport LNG export terminal, located in Quintana Island, Texas, has been offline and not producing LNG since June 2022 due to an explosion (see Explosion Rocks Freeport LNG Export Plant – Offline for 3 Weeks). Freeport, which exports some Marcellus/Utica molecules, has changed its estimated restart date multiple times. Earlier this month, Freeport revised its restart date to be the end of January (see Familiar Pattern: Freeport LNG Delays Restart Again, to End Jan.). A week later, sources told Reuters that restart will almost certainly be sometime in February (see Sources Say Freeport LNG Won’t Restart Until End of February). Every week the Freeport facility remains offline removes another four LNG cargo carriers from delivering our LNG to the rest of the world.
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U.S. natural gas demand is on track to hit record lows in January if unseasonably warm weather sticks around, according to Rystad Energy. It’s just too darned warm! The warm weather reduces demand for natgas used in heating. Also, as you will read today, a Freeport LNG restart that uses 2 Bcf/d is also likely delayed further–maybe until the end of February. Given the warm weather and Freeport, demand is down, and because of lower demand, prices are crumbling.
Three different highly-placed sources have whispered to a Reuters reporter that the Freeport LNG export facility, which has been offline since last June, will continue to be offline until at least sometime in February. Are you surprised? We aren’t.
James Daly, vice president for energy supply at New England’s largest electric utility, Eversource, recently delivered some blunt truth to regulators in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Daly told them if they want to lower the insanely high price of electricity in the region right now, in the short term, they need to import more foreign LNG, which is high-priced too. But not as high as burning oil (see 
The Freeport LNG export terminal, located in Quintana Island, Texas, has been offline and not producing LNG since June 2022 due to an explosion (see 
It’s that time of year. Typically at the end of a year, or the very beginning of a new year, publications will pontificate on what they predict will happen in the coming 12 months. We’ve seen a number of such articles about the energy space, including some predictions targeted specifically for the Marcellus/Utica. We’ve selected three such articles to share with you–all of them from authors and publications we highly respect.
The Freeport LNG export terminal, located in Quintana Island, Texas, has been offline and not producing LNG since early June due to an explosion (see 
The Freeport LNG export facility maintains it will restart accepting feedgas by the end of December. Following a request by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to Freeport to respond to a list of 64 questions, we wonder if the plant will make that deadline. We’ve lost track of how many times Freeport, which has been offline since early June following an explosion in the plant, has changed the restart date. Last week the company said the final final final final restart would happen by the end of December (see 
The front-month NYMEX futures contract (based on the price of gas trading at the Henry Hub) dropped like a rock yesterday–down 70 cents (-12.6%) to $5.58/MMBtu. The price has dropped for the past four trading days in a row. Some say it’s free fallin’. In total, the price has lost $1.66 (-22.9%) over the last four sessions. NYMEX trading during the day yesterday hit its lowest point since March of this year. Why? Mainly a warm short-term weather forecast, coupled with the continuing outage at the Freeport LNG export facility.
Three weeks ago, Freeport LNG, which has been out of commission since early June, changed the target date it would restart from November to mid-December (see 
MDN previously reported that in October, Joe Nolan, the CEO of New England’s largest utility company, Eversource, sent a letter to President Biden urging him to assemble a panel and figure out how to ensure natgas flows to New England (via LNG) this winter–because if it doesn’t, this IS the year rolling blackouts become reality (see 
The country of Japan is perenially either the #1 or #2 top LNG importer in the world. The country has virtually no domestic supplies of oil and gas and, therefore, must import what it uses. It’s no secret that Japan and its traders are some of the best in the world. So when Japan says supplies of LNG are getting tighter and that “Procurement [of LNG] can also be said to be in a state of war,” that’s alarming. And sobering. Japan says not enough money is being invested in LNG export projects, and although this year most countries can muddle through, beginning next year, it’s going to be a problem.