Cheniere Energy has increased gas flow in the last two days to its Sabine Pass LNG export terminal in Louisiana, after reducing intake since mid-January because of an instrumentation problem.
The terminal was scheduled to receive 126.6mn cf (3.6mn m³) of gas today, after taking 77.1mn cf yesterday.
Those would be the highest and second-highest daily volumes since Sabine Pass started accepting gas in late September. The previous high of 76.8mn cf was set on 20 December.
Cheniere on 14 January said that it would delay the first LNG export from Sabine Pass to late February or March because of instrumentation problems on cold boxes for train 1. Cold boxes are the refrigeration units that cool gas into liquid form. The first cargo had been scheduled to be sent out in late January.
Cheniere said at the time that the problem likely would take about 36 days to fix. The Houston-based company did not reply today to an Argus request for comment.
Sabine Pass received an average of 19.2mn cf/d of gas on 1-15 January, but flows were cut to an average of 5.6mn cf/d on 16 January-7 February. The average was 30.7mn cf/d in December and 3.1mn cf/d in November, with negligible flows in October and September.
The terminal can receive up to 1.64 Bcf/d from the Creole Trail pipeline.
Engineering firm Bechtel, which is building five liquefaction trains and associated facilities at Sabine Pass, will turn over the first train to Cheniere in May. Train 2 is scheduled to be turned over in August, train 3 in April 2017, train 4 in August 2017 and train 5 no later than December 2019.
Each of the five trains being built at Sabine Pass will have peak capacity of 5mn t/yr, equivalent to 690mn cf/d (19.5mn m³/d) of gas.
