US energy company Kinder Morgan said on Wednesday that the start-up of its Elba Island liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project near Savannah, Georgia had been pushed back, again.

“Our Elba liquefaction project, we now anticipate that it will be in service in the first quarter of 2019,” Kim Dang, President of Kinder Morgan said during a conference call discussing the company’s third-quarter results.

Dang added that Kinder Morgan does not expect the new delay to have a “material impact on our construction costs, given the way our construction and commercial contracts are structured.” He did not discuss the reasons behind the newest delay.

To remind, Kinder Morgan said earlier this year that the in-service date for the liquefaction facility located near the existing import facility at Elba Island was pushed back to the fourth quarter of this year. The original start-up of the facility was expected in the third quarter of this year.

Kinder Morgan said previously that delays in getting the liquefaction units assembled and then delivered to the site as well as some construction delays had contributed to pushing back the in-service date.

The nearly $2 billion Elba liquefaction project’s EPC contractor is IHI E&C while the project is supported by a 20-year contract with the Hague-based LNG giant Shell.

The project is currently building a total of ten liquefaction units with a total capacity of 2.5 million tonnes per year of LNG.

The first of the ten units is expected to be placed in service in the first quarter next year, with the remaining nine units scheduled to come online throughout 2019, according to Kinder Morgan.

LNG World News Staff