Venture Global announced on Monday that it has notified its long-term customers that its Calcasieu Pass facility will start commercial operations on April 15, 2025.
“The facility will achieve its commercial operation date, or COD, in under 68 months from its August 2019 final investment decision, despite substantial impacts including two hurricanes, the Covid-19 pandemic, and major unforeseen manufacturing issues, such as with the heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs) forming part of the facility’s power island,” the company said.
“Venture Global wishes to express its gratitude to its construction and completion teams who tirelessly worked to safely complete our facilities, to our vendor teams who provided invaluable support for the necessary repairs, and to our government regulators, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, for their oversight and cooperation.,” it said.
Venture Global added that these efforts now allow the firm to supply its long-term customers with the full 20-year contract term of the “lowest-cost, clean LNG as promised under our contracts, and, with our COD, makes Calcasieu Pass among the fastest greenfield LNG projects completed.”
A recent report by FERC said that Venture Global is expected to complete repairs on the final heat recovery steam generator at its Calcasieu Pass LNG terminal by the end of February.
Calcasieu Pass produced its first LNG on January 19, 2022, moving from FID to LNG production in 29 months, and the first commissioning cargo left the facility on March 1, 2022.
In February last year, Venture Global asked FERC to extend the in-service deadline for the facility for one additional year, or by February 21, 2025.
The 10 mtpa Calcasieu Pass facility consists of 18 modular units configured in 9 blocks.
Customers of the Calcasieu pass facility include Shell, BP, Repsol, Edison, Galp, PGNiG, now part of Orlen, Sinopec’s unit Unipec, and CNOOC.
Dispute with Calcasieu Pass customers
BP’s CEO Murray Auchincloss recently said he expects a ruling on an arbitration dispute with Venture Global to be delivered in the second half of this year.
BP has a 20-year LNG contract for volumes for the Calcasieu Pass LNG terminal in Louisiana, the same as Shell.
The two firms and other Calcasieu Pass customers are in a dispute with Venture Global over the launch of commercial operations at the facility and they previously launched arbitration proceedings against Venture Global.
Venture Global said in its IPO statement in December 2024 that it is targeting a COD (commercial operations date) for Calcasieu Pass at the end of March 2025.
The company said in the document that the facility had loaded and sold 342 LNG commissioning cargoes as of September 30, 2024.
According to Venture Global, the company received about $19.6 billion in gross proceeds from such commissioning cargoes.
The document also shows that pending arbitration claims against Venture Global regarding the Calcasieu Pass volumes have reached more than $5.5 billion.
