Liquefied natural gas producer Atlantic LNG said yesterday one of its production units will be down for scheduled maintenance in mid-March, and was expected to be back up by the end of the month. Work on production Train III, which has the capacity to produce 3.3 million tonnes per year (mtpa) of liquefied natural gas, will not affect Trinidad's delivery schedule, an Atlantic LNG spokesman said. "Routine maintenance activities will be conducted in mid-March, including on our Train III," the spokesman said, adding that the shutdown is part of wider maintenance at its facilities this year.
"Routine maintenance outages of varying durations have been planned for each of our four trains," he said. "These scheduled outages have already been factored into our production and delivery forecasts."
The spokesman declined to give details of the maintenance on other trains. Trinidad's Atlantic LNG, the biggest supplier of LNG to the United States, is made up of four production trains. Train I has a capacity of 3 metric tonnes per annum, Trains II and III are 3.3 metric tonnes per annum and Train IV is 5.2 metric tonnes per annum. Shareholders at Atlantic LNG include BP, BG Group, Repsol, GDF Suez and the National Gas Company of Trinidad.
Front-month US natural gas futures, which were up 2.3 cents at US$3.803 per mmBtu just before the data were released at about, edged up slightly after the report to the US$3.82 area. Oil prices rose as anxious traders prepared for the weekend. Two weeks ago, oil surged more than US$7 per barrel in electronic weekend trading, and prices are again climbing on the expectation that oil will jump before Monday trading begins. If oil rises to US$150 or more per barrel, and holds at that level for months, it could trigger another recession, economists said. Natural gas gained 2 cents at US$3.795 per 1,000 cubic feet. In other Nymex trading for April contracts, heating oil added 3 cents at US$3.0777 per gallon and gasoline futures gained 2 cents at US$3.0429 per gallon.
Oil is getting more expensive as the economy of the world's largest oil consumer, the US, appears to be improving. Last month, employers hired at the fastest pace in almost a year, pushing the unemployment rate down to the lowest level since April 2009. (Reuters)