Caturus achieves full commercialisation of Commonwealth LNG

US-based Caturus has completed the commercialisation of its planned Commonwealth LNG project on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. In an April 7 announcement, the company said customer offtake agreements to underpin the financing of the export terminal had been finalised. The launch of the financing process with lenders was now set to begin, it added.

This comes as Caturus works towards a final investment decision (FID) on Commonwealth LNG, which it anticipates achieving “in the coming weeks”. It also comes despite Japan’s JERA terminating its sales and purchase agreement (SPA) with Commonwealth LNG last month. 

Caturus had already authorised Technip Energies, the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor for Commonwealth LNG, to proceed with purchase orders for the project in December. This included six mixed-refrigerant compressors driven by LM9000 gas turbines to be supplied by Baker Hughes, six main cryogenic heat exchangers to be provided by Honeywell and four Titan 350 gas turbine-generators to be supplied by Solar Turbines.

Caturus said this week that the execution phase was now underway, with limited notices to proceed having been issued. Subcontracts have also been awarded for site preparation and surge wall development, as well as marine and material offloading facilities, the company added.

In its own announcement this week, Technip said the “substantial” authorisation it had now received from Caturus would allow it to “sustain critical activities and maintain strong project momentum ahead of FID”. Technip deems a “substantial” award to be worth between EUR500mn ($584mn) and EUR1bn ($1.2bn).

In total, Technip has been tasked with delivering six liquefaction trains, using its SnapLNG by T.EN modular technology, for Commonwealth LNG. The facility will have a total liquefaction capacity of 9.5mn tonnes per year (tpy).

Caturus has run into several delays as it has worked on reaching FID. Assuming a decision is finally taken in the coming weeks, start-up of Commonwealth LNG is now targeted for 2030.

In its announcement this week, Caturus also said it expected to close its transaction to acquire SM Energy’s Galvan Ranch assets “in the near term”. That transaction was announced in February and will see Caturus take on 260 producing wells with roughly 250mn cubic feet (7.1mn cubic metres) per day of natural gas equivalent in combined output.

This represents part of Caturus’ “wellhead-to-water” strategy.

Caturus is owned by energy-focused alternative asset manager Kimmeridge. Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Energy holds a 24.1% equity stake in Caturus.