An LNG tanker heading for Dominion Energy Inc.’s Cove Point LNG facility in Maryland on Dec. 14 was bringing fuel to the plant, ahead of the start-up of the terminal’s export unit, according to a Reuters interactive map and sources familiar with the cargo.
Cove Point has long been an import facility but Dominion has spent $4 billion to add export facilities, which the Virginia-based energy company expects to enter service before the end of the year.
The gas market is tracking tankers that will pick up the first LNG export from Cove Point.
The cargo expected to arrive on Dec. 14 is on the Maran Gas Delphi tanker arriving from Nigeria.
Once it enters service, Cove Point will be the second-largest LNG export terminal in the lower 48 U.S. states, after Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana, which exported its first cargo in February 2016.
With Sabine Pass, Cove Point and a couple of other export terminals under construction, the United States is expected to have the third-biggest LNG export capacity in the world by year-end 2018.
U.S. LNG export capacity is expected to soar from 3.0 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) now to 3.8 Bcf/d by the end of the year, 5.3 Bcf/d by the end of 2018 and 10.1 Bcf/d by the end of 2019.
One Bcf/d is enough fuel for about 5 million U.S. homes.
Cove Point will be able to liquefy about 0.75 Bcf/d of gas.
Last week, Dominion said Royal Dutch Shell Plc will take the initial LNG cargoes from Cove Point.
Dominion sold the project’s capacity for 20 years to a subsidiary of GAIL (India) Ltd and to ST Cove Point, a joint venture of units of Japanese trading company Sumitomo Corp and Tokyo Gas Co Ltd.
Some of the LNG going to ST Cove Point will go to Tokyo Gas and some will go to Kansai Electric Power Co Inc., according to Sumitomo’s Pacific Summit Energy (PSE) LLC unit.
PSE in 2013 agreed to buy 0.35 Bcf/d of gas from Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.’s production in the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia for 20 years once Cove Point enters service.
There are four 0.7-Bcf/d liquefaction trains operating at Sabine Pass. A fifth is under construction and expected to enter service in mid-2019.
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