Cheniere has produced liquefied natural gas for the first time at an expansion project in Texas, marking the second new U.S. plant to start making the supercooled fuel in 2024.
The Houston-based company said it produced LNG from the first liquefaction unit, or “train,” at its Corpus Christi Stage 3 project located in San Patricio County on the state’s southeastern coast, according to a news release Monday. The move is a key milestone for the export project, which is made up of seven trains and is now more than 75 percent finished.
The production at the Corpus Christi terminal comes as the United States remains the world’s top exporter of the gas — shipping roughly 376.2 billion cubic feet (bcf) of LNG in October, the Department of Energy said in a December assessment.
If LNG export projects currently under construction start operations as planned, North America’s export capacity of the fuel is slated to more than double between 2024 and 2028 – from 11.4 bcf per day in 2023 to 24.4 bcf a day in 2028, the Energy Information Administration said in a post on Monday.
