Houston — The Shell-chartered Gemmata LNG tanker on Tuesday was docked at the Elba Island LNG terminal in Georgia, potentially to discharge a cargo to be used for cool-down of the facility as part of commissioning activities, according to port agents and market participants. It remains unclear when the facility's first commercial cargo would be ready to load.
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Cadastre-se agoraAn Atlantic-based market participant said Tuesday the volume in the LNG tanker is potentially a half cargo from Trinidad intended to cool down the facility as part of commissioning.
A Kinder Morgan spokeswoman said the Gemmata was docked at the terminal but did not confirm whether the vessel was there to load or discharge. The company owns 51% of Elba Liquefaction. The project is supported by a 20-year contract with Shell, which will take 100% of the liquefaction capacity of the terminal. Shell did not comment on the matter.
Gemmata's last port was Trinidad and Tobago's Point Fortin and it left loaded from there and headed to Elba Island, according to market participants familiar with the LNG tanker itinerary.
Total feedgas deliveries to the Elba Island facility have averaged 32 MMcf/d, month to date, a 14 MMcf/d (126%) build over September. Flows to the facility this month are roughly equivalent to the full feedgas demand of one of Shell's 10 Movable Modular Liquefaction Systems (MMLS) trains, S&P Global Platts Analytics data showed Tuesday.
In early October, Kinder Morgan announced the start of commercial service for the first of 10 proposed liquefaction trains at the $2 billion Elba liquefaction project.
Elba is the smallest of all the existing major US LNG export terminals. It could take as long as 100 days for the single operating train at Elba, with a nameplate capacity of around 33 MMcf/d, to fill a standard LNG cargo, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.
(This content has been corrected since published Monday to reflect that the Gemmata LNG tanker was laden as it approached the Elba Island facility.)
-- Ingrid Furtado, ingrid.furtado@spglobal.com
-- Edited by Derek Sands, newsdesk@spglobal.com