US LNG Exports Remain High in January Despite Cold, Freeport

US LNG exports in January stood to 8.56mn tons, just around 3% below December record-high levels, despite weather disruptions and the Freeport outage according to S&P Commodity Insights.

• The US shipped 48% of January exports to Europe, 10% to Asia, 5% to South America and 3% to North America.
• US LNG exporters canceled multiple cargoes over the past week as freezing temperatures disrupted operations at terminals and caused US spot gas prices to soar, creating an incentive for those who could sell gas back into the domestic market instead of exporting it as LNG to do so, market sources told S&P.
• Freeport LNG’s Train 3 is expected to be offline for around one month due to an electrical problem that affected the unit during the recent cold snap. Market sources said previously Freeport cancelled six cargoes due to the outage.