I recently posted an article about a 2022 occurrence at the Freeport LNG Export Facility in Texas, among the more important pieces of America’s energy infrastructure. I had admittedly reported it to be a 2023 incident, a typo for which I now apologize. Nevertheless, the facility is back in the news and not for good reasons. The 2022 event has been debated as a potential cyber attack by Russian agents, aimed at a facility of great importance to our country and its energy needs. We will not further explore potential Russian involvement here, instead referring interested readers to review the previously published original article.

Repairs were anticipated to take six months or more, with Freeport’s Executive Director hoping for their completion by 1/23. However, they seem to be jinxed, incurring one problem after another. Repairs from the 2022 occurrence took a full ten months to complete before the facility was allowed to return online.

This was not the only recent negative occurrence at Freeport, the Gulf Coast’s largest LNG exporter. The 2022 accident/incident that Freeport experienced was reported as an explosion and fire that, although it resulted in no injuries or deaths, shut them down for what officials then predicted to be “at least three weeks”. Considering that they liquify and export approximately 2 BCF of LNG each and every day, the incident removed about 17% of our total LNG exports from the market.

After shutting down the terminals’ three liquification “trains” completely, the repairs drug on for a full ten months. Remember, they had originally been estimated to take only a few weeks. The plant was finally back online by 3/23, but was operating at far less than capacity. It turns out a second loading dock was still out of commission, causing production to drop by about 0.18 BCF/day. Freeport was fined over $163K for this operational oversight.

Seems Freeport has had a run of poor luck (or intentional sabotage) for some time now, bad news for what is acknowledged as among the most important pieces of US energy infrastructure. Here we are in 2024 now, and the facility is still partially crippled. Unusually cold weather in January caused two of the three liquification “trains” to be shuttered at least through May.

As recently as March 5, repairs on train three continued with officials admitting it was taking “longer than expected”. Let’s hope this important industrial component will finally be repaired effectively, and the facility can operate as energy officials had expected. Surely Freeport’s luck will soon change, and for the better, allowing it to return to operations as intended. Cross your fingers America. The consequences affect not only us, but our European allies as well, and in a bad way. Meanwhile Russia is allowed its continued domination of the Eastern European and Western Asian natural gas markets, a huge source to finance its continued invasion of Ukraine and other atrocities around the globe.