Freeport’s Texas LNG Export Plant Still Offline After Storm Nicholas

U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) company Freeport LNG said on Wednesday that it was still not producing LNG at its export plant in Texas due to a power outage during Tropical Storm Nicholas.

“Our production remains off-line until CenterPoint completes repair work on their system,” Freeport LNG spokesperson Heather Browne said in an email, referring to the local power company, which is a unit of CenterPoint Energy Inc.

Earlier in the day, the plant was scheduled to take in some natural gas, which energy traders said was a sign the plant was on track to exit the outage.

Refinitiv said Freeport was still scheduled to take in about 0.7 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on Wednesday, up from 0.1 bcfd on Tuesday.

That, however, is down from the 0.9 bcfd the plant planned to take in on Wednesday earlier in the day and compares with an average of 2.0 bcfd pulled in over the past 30 days.

On Tuesday, Freeport said all three liquefaction trains at the plant shut likely due to power outages from Nicholas.

At its peak Tuesday morning, Nicholas knocked out power to more than 529,000 homes and businesses in Texas, mostly in the Houston area. Freeport is located on the Gulf Coast about 60 miles (97 kilometers) south of Houston.

CenterPoint, the utility with the most outages during Nicholas, had about 68,000 customers still without power in the Houston area Wednesday afternoon, down from a peak of around 454,000 Tuesday morning.

The three other U.S. LNG export plants along the Gulf Coast – Cameron LNG’s Cameron in Louisiana and Cheniere Energy Inc’s Corpus Christi in Texas and Sabine Pass in Louisiana – continued to operate through the storm.