Venture Global seeks to commence some service at Louisiana Calcasieu LNG plant
Oct 11 (Reuters) - U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) company Venture Global LNG asked federal energy regulators for permission to commence service of liquefaction blocks 7-9 at its Calcasieu Pass LNG export plant in Louisiana.
The startup of commercial service at that plant is the subject of several disputes between Venture Global and some of its customers, including units of European energy firms Shell , BP, Edison and Repsol.
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Some of Venture Global's customers have filed arbitration cases claiming Venture Global unfairly deprived them of billions of dollars of cargoes that Venture Global has sold while the plant was still in commercialization, or test mode, since March 2022.
In its filing on Tuesday, Venture Global told the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that it produced first LNG in blocks 7A, 7B, 8A and 8B in June 2022 and blocks 9A and 9B in July 2022.
Officials at Venture Global were not immediately available for comment.
There are 18 modular liquefaction trains configured in nine blocks at Calcasieu. Each block can produce about 1.3 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of LNG, or 0.2 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of natural gas.
Analysts have estimated it cost about $4.5 billion to build Calcasieu.
In total, Venture Global has about 70 MTPA of LNG export capacity in operation, construction or development in Louisiana, including the 10-MTPA Calcasieu (operation), 20-MTPA Plaquemines (construction), 20-MTPA Delta (development) and 20-MTPA CP2 (development).
Venture Global is building the $8.5 billion Plaquemines project, which is on track to produce first LNG in 2024, and started early site work on CP2 in the spring of 2023.
CP2 will be built next to the Calcasieu plant. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York and Curtis Williams in Houston; editing by Jonathan Oatis)