Freeport LNG Liquefaction Train Shuts Down at Texas Export Plant After Malfunction

(Reuters) — One of three liquefaction trains at Freeport LNG's export plant in Texas tripped offline on Wednesday, the company told state environmental regulators in a report on Thursday.

Freeport said Train 3 tripped while operating due to an issue with a lube oil pump, causing an emissions event that lasted more than 11 hours from Wednesday evening into early Thursday morning.

The company did not detail plans for its restart in the state report.

After the news, U.S. natural gas futures NGc1 retreated, halving an 8% gain that took prices to a one-year high earlier in the day.

The Freeport plant is one of the most closely watched in the world with start and stop of its operations often causing massive gas price swings.

Before the news, gas traded at 11-month highs of around $15 per MMBtu at both the Dutch Title Transfer Facility benchmark in Europe and the Japan-Korea Marker benchmark in Asia on worries about Russian supplies and the coming of colder winter weather.

The earlier U.S. price gain was partly driven by a couple of U.S. export plants being on track to have their gas supply jump to record highs. The seven big U.S. operating plants saw their supply on track to hit an 11-month high of 14.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) on Thursday, up from 14.1 Bcf/d on Wednesday.

While the Freeport plant is among the seven, the closure of one liquefaction train should reduce its gas flow. Each train at the 2.1-bcfd Freeport plant is capable of turning around 0.7 Bcf/d of gas into LNG daily.

One billion cubic feet is enough gas to supply about five million U.S. homes for a day.

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