Shell and Kinder Morgan's subsidiary Southern Liquefaction Company have announced their intent to form a limited liability company to develop a liquefaction plant in two phases at Southern LNG's existing Elba Island LNG Terminal, near Savannah, Georgia.
Once finalized, Kinder Morgan, through its affiliates, will own 51% of the entity and operate the facility. Shell, through its affiliates, will own the remaining 49% and subscribe to 100% of the liquefaction capacity.
The total project is expected to have liquefaction capacity of approximately 2.5 Mt/year of LNG. In June 2012, the Elba Island terminal received approval from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to export up to 4 Mt/year of LNG to Free Trade Agreement (FTA) countries. In August 2012, the terminal submitted a filing to the DOE seeking approval to export up to 4 Mt/year of LNG to non-FTA countries. Phase I of the project, approximately 1.5 Mt/year, requires no additional DOE approval. The project will use Shell’s innovative small-scale liquefaction unit, which will be integrated with the existing Elba Island facility and enable rapid construction compared to traditional large-scale plants.The existing Elba regasification plant has a capacity of 13.4 Mt/year (18.1 bcm/year).