US liquefied natural gas (LNG) developer Delfin LNG has asked federal regulators to extend the deadline for the company to put the onshore part of its proposed Gulf of Mexico floating LNG export project off Louisiana into service, until September 2023.
The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) said on Thursday July 21, that Delfin sought the extension on July 15.
Delfin is one of several North American LNG export projects that delayed decisions to start construction in recent years in part because coronavirus demand destruction made customers unwilling to sign long-term deals needed to finance the multibillion-dollar facilities.
Currently, there are eight companies hoping to make a final investment decision (FID) in 2022 to build a factory in the United States, Canada, or Mexico. Many of those projects are years late.
Deflin’s project was approved by FERC in September 2017. Since then the FERC has allowed three one-year extensions to complete the project and the project was to be operational in September 2022.
Delfin told the FERC: “The LNG market is strong due to the current geopolitical importance of the invasion of Ukraine and the European Union’s initiative to increase the supply of US LNG to Europe,”
Earlier in July, Delphin agreed to sell 0.5 MTPA LNG to a unit of Dutch trading company Vitol for 15 years.
The project will use existing offshore pipelines to supply gas to up to four vessels, each capable of producing approximately 3.5 MTPA of LNG.
The company says each ship costs around $2 billion and the first service is scheduled to start around 2026, four years after FID.
Delfin says that after the first FID they would start an Avocet project to add two more 3.5-MTPA liquefaction vessels.
For more information visit delfinmidstream.com
