“This week, our Sabine Pass Liquefaction (SPL) facility in Louisiana produced and loaded its 3,000th cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG), reaching this milestone less than 10 years after exporting Cheniere’s first cargo,” Cheniere said via its social media on Thursday.
The LNG cargo departed from the facility via the LNG vessel Al Qa’iyyah.
The LNG carrier, built in 2024 under the massive QatarEnergy shipbuilding program, is expected to arrive at the Fluxys-operated Zeebrugge LNG terminal in Belgium at the end of this month, its AIS data provided by VesselsValue shows.
Cheniere notes it is the largest US LNG producer and the second-largest LNG operator globally.
In 2023, the company shipped the 2,000th cargo of LNG from the Sabine Pass facility.
Earlier this year, Cheniere produced and exported the 4,000th cargo of LNG from its Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi terminals.
Expansion
The US LNG exporting plans to boost its export capacity to about 100 mtpa via new expansion projects at its two LNG terminals.
It currently produces about 46 mtpa at its LNG export facilities, with up to 13 mtpa under construction.
Cheniere’s Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana, the largest LNG export plant in the US, currently has a capacity of about 30 mtpa following the launch of the sixth train in February 2022.
The company plans to add 20 mtpa to the plant with the proposed Sabine Pass Stage 5 expansion project.
Moreover, Cheniere recently announced a postive final investment decision to build two more midscale trains at its 15 mtpa Corpus Christi LNG plant in Texas.
The CCL midscale trains 8 and 9 project is being built adjacent to the Corpus Christi Stage 3 project and consists of two midscale trains with an expected total liquefaction capacity of over mtpa of LNG and other debottlenecking infrastructure.
Upon completion of the project, and together with expected debottlenecking and CCL Stage 3, the Corpus Christi LNG terminal is expected to reach over 30 mtpa in total liquefaction capacity later this decade.
Besides these CCL expansions, Cheniere also plans the CCL Stage IV expansion project.
This expansion would add an additional 20 mtpa of capacity to the Corpus Christi facility, including debottlenecking.
