DOE review won’t delay LNG export license

According to a Jan. 3 report in Platts, an unidentified official in the Department of Energy has told Platts that an agency review of various plans to ship liquefied natural gas, or LNG, from the United States will not impede consideration of an application for a license enabling the re-opening of the LNG plant operated by ConocoPhillips on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.

Faced with a growing line of applications for LNG exports from the Lower 48, DOE views the Alaska proposal as fundamentally different from the Lower 48 proposals and will consider the Alaska application separately, the official told Platts.

In response to a revival in the Cook Inlet gas industry and amid concerns about the need for market opportunities for Cook Inlet gas producers, in December ConocoPhillips applied for a license to export up to 40 billion cubic feet of gas over a period of two years from the Kenai Peninsula plant. The company had mothballed the plant earlier in 2013, shortly before a previous export license expired in March of that year. The plant had been experiencing difficulty in securing sufficient gas to maintain its export operations.

DOE can quickly approve an application to export LNG to a country that has a free-trade agreement with the United States, but must give more careful consideration to exports elsewhere. ConocoPhillips has not disclosed who might now buy Alaska LNG, although it appears that the company wants the option to sell to a non-free-trade country. LNG from the Cook Inlet has previously gone to Japan, which does not have a free trade agreement with the U.S.

—Alan Bailey