BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Representatives from NextDecade and its main contractor for the liquefied natural gas export terminal being built at the Port of Brownsville, Bechtel, gave the keynote presentations at a recent South Texas Manufacturers Association meeting.
However, the presentations were deemed private and not for publication. So, the Rio Grande Guardian International News Service sought the analysis of STMA President Mike Willis, who emceed the meeting. Guardian audio editor Mario Muñoz asked Willis what he knew of the LNG project. He said his analysis was very much from a laymen's perspective.
Willis said: “Well, this is one of the largest projects in the country and certainly the largest in the state and certainly the largest in the Rio Grande Valley. It's been years in planning and conditions are right that finally NextDecade was able to secure all the customer funding they needed, the long term commitments and they made a final investment decision to move forward with this (LNG facility at the Port of Brownsville). So, years of planning, and now they have pulled the trigger on it. They have got paying customers contracts for 20 years or more.”
Willis said two other major projects related to the LNG facility would be going on at the same time.
“So, this project is going forward at the Port and it is going to involve several other major projects. The Brownsville Ship Channel is going to be dredged to 52 feet deep, all the way from the jetties to the Port to facilitate these large tankers coming in to pick up liquefied natural gas. There's a major pipeline that is going to be constructed by Enbridge Energy out of Canada that will connect to pipelines flowing from the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale to Nueces Main in Corpus. They will tie into those pipelines and pipe natural gas down to the Port of Brownsville and that natural gas coming into that pipeline will be the raw material, the input for these liquefaction trains that are going to be built. So, this is an eight year long project.”
Willis then explained his definition of a “train.” He said in energy industry parlance it is like a big manufacturing plant.
“A train, I would call it a manufacturing facility. There are going to be six of them side by side ultimately (at the Port of Brownsville). Each one works independently. Each one does the same thing but they work independently. Each one of them will have natural gas coming in, completely gas, they get the CO2 and water out of it so it is pure gas. Then it'll be super-chilled in that train. I believe it's 270 degrees below zero, at which point natural gas turns to a liquid. Typically, when it turns to a liquid, it shrinks to about one 600th of its volume.”
Willis continued: “So, all this gas would be coming in and then it would end up compressed into a liquid, not under pressure, just naturally because it's cold. So there's no pressure, no explosive type pressures that are going to explode the tank. It's just turning it chilled and turning from a gas into a liquid. Then the liquid is going to be stored in refrigerated and super-insulated tanks at each train.
“And then, offshore transport ships are going to come into the Port, pull up next to the train, hook up to the outflow of the refrigerated tanks. They're going to open up the bowels and that super-chilled liquid natural gas is going to run into super-chilled tanks on the ships. They'll fill them up, the ship will turn around and go across the ocean keeping it super-chilled at that temperature that whole time.”
In his audio interview, Willis also spoke about how LNG produced in the U.S. would allow Europe to be less depended on Russia for its natural gas. He said the LNG should also reduce the amount of natural gas being burned off into the atmosphere.
Here is the audio interview:
