Author Topic: Annual U.S. liquefied natural gas exports forecast to exceed pipeline exports in 2022  (Read 436 times)

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Offline thackney

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Annual U.S. liquefied natural gas exports forecast to exceed pipeline exports in 2022
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46796
FEBRUARY 18, 2021



According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) February 2021 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA forecasts that U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports will exceed natural gas exports by pipeline in the first and fourth quarters of 2021 and on an annual basis in 2022. Monthly U.S. LNG exports exceeded natural gas exports by pipeline by nearly 1.2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in November 2020, according to EIA’s Natural Gas Monthly. LNG exports have only exceeded natural gas exports by pipeline once since 1998—in April 2020—by 0.01 Bcf/d.

U.S. LNG exports set consecutive monthly records of 9.4 Bcf/d in November and of 9.8 Bcf/d in both December 2020 and January 2021, according to EIA’s estimates based on the shipping data provided by Bloomberg Finance, L.P. EIA forecasts that U.S. LNG gross exports will average 9.7 Bcf/d in February 2021 before declining to seasonal lows in the shoulder months of the spring and fall seasons. EIA forecasts LNG exports to average 8.5 Bcf/d in 2021 and 9.2 Bcf/d in 2022, compared with average gross pipeline exports of 8.8 Bcf/d in 2021 and 8.9 Bcf/d in 2022.

Since November 2020, all six U.S. LNG export facilities have been operating near full design capacity. In December, the Corpus Christi LNG facility in Texas commissioned its third and final liquefaction unit six months ahead of schedule, bringing the total U.S. liquefaction capacity to 9.5 Bcf/d baseload (10.8 Bcf/d peak) across six export terminals. The November–January increase in U.S. LNG exports has been driven by rising international natural gas and LNG prices, particularly in Asia, and lower global LNG supply because of unplanned outages at several LNG export facilities worldwide.



U.S. pipeline exports to Mexico increased by 6.4% in the first eleven months of 2020 compared with the same period in 2019 as a result of the completion of a new segment of the Wahalajara pipeline system in June and the Cempoala compressor station in September. The completion of Mexico’s Samalayuca-Sásabe pipeline (0.47 Bcf/d capacity) in January 2021 and the expected completion of Tula-Villa de Reyes pipeline (0.89 Bcf/d capacity) later this year are expected to further increase U.S. pipeline exports to Mexico.
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Offline Fishrrman

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Methinks that instead of "exporting" this to Canada or Mexico, we ought to be sending that natural gas down to Texas. Ain't they a little short right now...?

Offline thackney

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Methinks that instead of "exporting" this to Canada or Mexico, we ought to be sending that natural gas down to Texas. Ain't they a little short right now...?

Once the LNG is liquefied, it takes substantial facilities to vaporize that back to Pipeline Gas.  It will boil off on its own, but a typical LNG export terminal might take six month to let it all boil off.  Then you need rather massive compression to get it back to the ~1,200 psi and at a volume of use.

In short, you need an LNG Import Terminal, and most all of those were not built that way.

The Freeport LNG terminal is the exception.  I believe it was the last Import Terminal built in the US.  I was working at Technip who built it at the time it was commissioned.  They imported one ship load to commission and it never run again.  Years later an export terminal was added.  After the billions of dollars they spent the first time, a many billions later it is now an export terminal.

That is the only place I know that could reverse the process to send it back to the pipelines, if the pipelines were operated in reverse.  Not sure they or the connecting pipeline was capable of operating in the temperatures we had either.

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