Freeport LNG says it completed repairs, seeks to restart some operations

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Freeport LNG, the second largest U.S. liquefied natural gas exporter, on Monday said it had completed repairs to its Texas plant and asked U.S. regulators for permission to take early steps to restart the fire-idled facility.

The closely-held U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) company’s export facility was knocked offline by a fiery blast on June 8 and barred from resuming production until federal regulators completed an extensive safety review and approved resulting changes.

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On Monday, Freeport sought permission to begin introducing LNG into the plant’s piping system, according to a filing with the U.S Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). It asked for a response to the request by Jan. 24.

The procedure would be a first step to returning the 15 million tonne per year export facility to normal operations after a seven month outage. The company said “subsequent approvals would be necessary” to fully return the liquefaction trains to service.

It sought approval “to commence cool down of its Loop 1 transfer piping and reinstate the facility’s boil off gas management compressors and associated piping,” the filing said. The work would take about 11 days.

An approval would allow the “introduction of LNG into the piping systems to allow the piping to cool down to cryogenic temperatures necessary for circulation of LNG within the Loop 1 piping system and to transfer LNG to Dock 1 of the export facility,” Freeport said. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York Editing by Nick Zieminski)