A five-year project to build one of the world's largest facilities for receiving and regasifying liquefied natural gas is nearing completion in southern Louisiana.
Designed and built by Bechtel for Houston-based Cheniere Energy, the Sabine Pass Terminal project has comprised two construction phases. Following completion of phase 1 in 2008, the facility had a processing capacity of 2.6 billion cubic feet (74
million cubic meters) of natural gas per day. Phase 2, to be completed this year, will expand the per-day capacity to 4 billion cubic
feet (113 million cubic meters).
Over the past several years, Bechtel has built some of the world’s largest LNG production facilities in Australia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, and Trinidad, and is currently constructing a major plant in Angola. Sabine Pass marks the company's entry into the market for LNG regasification.
In regasification, LNG is heated from cryogenic temperatures of about minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 degrees Celsius) using submerged combustion vaporizers fueled by natural gas produced in the process. In Phase 2 of the project, Cheniere is pioneering the use of ambient air vaporizers, which do not require fuel as a source of heat.
As one of the first new LNG terminals being built in the United States in a quarter of a century, Sabine Pass LNG is a landmark for Cheniere and Bechtel, and a harbinger of good things to come for the U.S. energy market.
For more information, see the September 2007 Bechtel Briefs.
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