Natural Gas Terminal Reopens After Massive Explosion

SEATTLE (Oil Monster): Federal regulators have cleared a gas terminal on the Texas coast to restart commercial production of liquified natural gas for export, eight months after an explosion rocked the facility and nearby towns.

Subsequent investigations revealed a host of problems with Freeport LNG—which supercools fracked gas and loads it onto seafaring tankers—from overworked staff to overlooked engineering reports, which contributed to circumstances that led highly combustible methane to leak from a pipe and catch fire last June.

Earlier this month, federal authorities presented findings at a public hearing and said that Freeport LNG had corrected safety issues and repaired damage. 

On Tuesday, the company announced that it received regulatory approval to get back to business. Michael Smith, a New York billionaire and founder of Freeport LNG, said in a statement that staffing increases and procedural improvements at the terminal would “enhance operational excellence.”

“Eight months of diligence, discipline and dedicated efforts by our teams, working collaboratively alongside the regulatory agencies and local officials, have positioned us to resume LNG production,” Smith said.

Freeport LNG will rejoin the energy export boom already unfolding on the Gulf Coast. It’s one of five working gas terminals in Texas and Louisiana that have cropped up in the last seven years and turned the United States from a major gas importer to the world’s top exporter. 

As gas prices abroad remain significantly higher than prices at home, most of those terminals have expansion plans. New projects slated for the Rio Grande Valley and Lake Charles, Louisiana, have been met with protest. All of them aim to sell the bounty of Texas’ fracking on international markets. 

These are high times for global gas traders. The disruption of Russian gas to Europe has raised prices, encouraging developers and fueling the buildout along the Gulf. According to a report released Wednesday by Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, and BailoutWatch, LNG exporters finalized 45 long-term deals in 2022 to sell U.S. gas abroad, up from 14 in 2021 and three in 2020.

Lukas Ross, a program manager at Friends of the Earth and an author of the report, said “The industry is shamelessly exploiting the crisis in Europe in order to lock in another generation of infrastructure.”

Despite the focus on Europe, he said, Asian buyers accounted for most long-term contracts for U.S. LNG, exported primarily from the Gulf Coast. Freeport LNG lacks long-term contracts because it rents its facility for gas suppliers to execute their own contracts with buyers abroad. 

Suppliers get the gas—a mixture primarily composed of methane—from Texas shale formations cracked open through hydraulic fracturing. For domestic consumption, it gets to users via pipelines. But for shipment and sales overseas it must be supercooled and compressed through an energy-intensive process into liquified natural gas. That process happens in compressor trains at export facilities, where the liquid hydrocarbon is then stored in giant tanks at about -260 degrees Fahrenheit before export.   

According to a review presented this month by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the explosion at Freeport LNG happened when a pressure release valve failed to open, causing a pipe to overheat and burst.

On Tuesday, the company said in a statement that one of its liquefaction trains had immediately returned to service, while a second would come online within weeks, and a third still required regulatory approval. It has previously announced hopes to build a fourth. 

For Naomi Yoder, a staff scientist with Healthy Gulf based in Houston, the troubles at Freeport offer a warning to other communities as an export sector continues to grow on the coast. 

“All of these plants have a significant risk because they’re storing this huge amount of frozen methane,” Yoder said. “There’s the potential for a much bigger, more catastrophic incident.”

Melanie Oldham, a physical therapist and environmental activist, remembers the day on June 8 when she stepped outside her home in Freeport to investigate a sudden sound like rolling thunder. She had reason to be concerned: Her small city is surrounded by massive oil, gas, and chemical plants, and is no stranger to industrial accidents.

The sirens and horns of the local emergency awareness system didn’t sound, so Oldham figured things were fine. Only later in the day did she and other residents learn from news reports that a serious accident was indeed unfolding nearby in Quintana Beach, a tiny town where just a few dozen permanent residents remain.

Courtesy: www.texasobserver.org