GLNG: NextDecade advances clean LNG plans

It has been another busy week for US-based LNG developer NextDecade, which is trying to position its proposed Rio Grande liquefaction project at Texas’ Port of Brownsville as one of the most environmentally friendly facilities of its kind. The company has announced two separate partnerships in recent days that are geared towards bolstering Rio Grande LNG’s green credentials.
On April 14, NextDecade announced that it had signed an engineering services agreement (ESA) with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America for the design, licence and performance guarantee of the KM CDR Process. This is a post-combustion carbon capture technology that will be applied at Rio Grande LNG.
Days later, on April 19, NextDecade said it was partnering with Project Canary on a pilot project aimed at monitoring, reporting and independent third-party measurement and certification of the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of the LNG to be sold from Rio Grande.
This comes after NextDecade launched a subsidiary, NEXT Carbon Solutions, last month to develop a carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant to support Rio Grande LNG and capture most of its emissions. Later in March, the company also struck a preliminary deal with Occidental Petroleum’s Oxy Low Carbon Ventures unit for offtake and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the project.
NextDecade has not yet reached a final investment decision (FID) on Rio Grande, but is aiming to sanction at least two trains providing 27mn tonnes per year (tpy) this year. An FID on the associated CCS project is anticipated to follow. The flurry of deals being announced by NextDecade suggests that the company is moving closer to the FIDs.