Sept 12 (Askume) – U.S. liquefied natural gas export plants suffered heavy losses on Thursday as Hurricane Francine devastated southeastern Louisiana and energy companies cut supplies to the plants, data from financial firm LSEG showed.
The National Hurricane Center said in a report that Francine has weakened from a Category 2 hurricane to a tropical depression as it moves northeast, but is still packing winds of 35 mph (55 km/h) and some areas are at risk of dangerous hurricane conditions.
Louisiana is home to three of the seven largest US LNG export plants.
Natural gas flows to US LNG export plants fell to a two-week low of 11.7 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on Thursday, from 11.9 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on Wednesday, London Stock Exchange data showed.
Total feed gas volumes averaged about 12.7 bcfd on Tuesday, compared to 13.4 bcfd last week.
The decline was mainly due to lower flows from Louisiana’s 2.0 bcfd Cameron LNG export plant, which fell from 1.9 bcfd on Tuesday to 0.6 bcfd on Thursday. Feed gas shipments to Cameron averaged 2.1 bcfd over the past week.
One billion cubic feet of natural gas is enough to supply about 5 million homes per day.
Cameron LNG officials were not immediately available to comment on the reasons for the production cuts.
According to Cameroon’s website, Cameroon’s LNG partners include U.S. energy company Sempra Energy (SRE.N) , Japanese groups Mitsui & Co. (8031.T) and Mitsubishi (8058.T) , France’s Total Energies (TTEF.PA) and Japanese Instruments (9101.T) shipping company Nippon Yusen KK (NYK Line).
