New Artery Opens to Feed Corpus Christi LNG

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Written by Daniel Graeber for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--A new, 40-mile pipeline could help bring as much as 1.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day to Cheniere Energy Incorporated's (Houston, Texas) liquefaction facility in Texas, operators said.

The ADCC pipeline is now in service. The artery is delivering gas from the larger Whistler network to Cheniere's Corpus Christi liquefaction facility in Texas.

Drawing from the Permian basin, the pipeline could send some 1.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas on to the so-called trains that will cool it to the liquid form for eventual exports.

Corpus Christi is among the busiest export terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the country. There were 23 vessels laden with LNG that left U.S. terminals during the seven-day period ending July 10 carrying a combined 85 billion cubic feet of product. Of those, four left from Corpus Christi.

Corpus Christi is a three-train facility that includes three storage tanks that each has the capacity to hold 5.6 million cubic feet of LNG. The United States is the world leader in LNG exports, filling a market void left by sanctions imposed on Russia for waging war in Ukraine.

Operators said the new network would also help reduce the amount of natural gas flared from the Permian.

Flaring is a growing concern given recent indications that record-breaking temperatures across the globe are the result of human-related endeavors. Flaring is the process of burning off the natural gas that's typically associated with crude oil production.

The World Bank estimated that flaring volumes last year hit a level not seen since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit North America. Capturing that gas could help address energy demand globally, though that level of flaring is a nagging concern given that natural gas is comprised mostly of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has far more warming potential than carbon dioxide.

Operators tend to burn the gas off when market prices are low or transportation options are limited. Shane Mullins, Industrial Info's vice president of energy products and project development, said recently that unless the associated gas has a pathway out, oil production could be inhibited.

"Permian Basin oil production is still growing, just not at the pace it did in previous years," Mullins said. "Combine that with the fact that the area's gas-to-oil ratio (GOR) is increasing, and you clearly see that natural gas takeaway capacity must continue to grow, even if crude production slows down somewhat."

Scientists at the U.S. space agency NASA had once observed a 2-mile plume of methane emanating from the Permian. The U.S. Energy Department said North Dakota, Wyoming, California and the U.S. territorial waters of the Gulf of Mexico are the primary basins for flared gas.

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