The marketing unit for a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) production facility on the Atlantic Coast has filed with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for authorization to export small containerized cargoes of LNG from Port Canaveral, near the NASA Space Center, mainly to free trade agreement (FTA) countries in the Caribbean or Central America.

American LNG, the prospective builder of the $250 million LNG production facility, seeks DOE approval to ship up to 30.2 Bcf annually, or 600,000 metric tons of LNG over a 20-year period to unspecified FTA countries. Domestic gas supplies would be liquefied at the proposed plant in Titusville, FL, which is being developed. LNG ultimately would be delivered to customers via truck or rail for transportation and other domestic uses and/or shipped in tanks via container ships to deliver outside the United States.

TICO Development Partners LLC, an affiliate of privately held Florida East Coast Industries (FECI), won approval Jan. 27 from the Titusville city council to construct the plant on an undeveloped site west of U.S. Highway 1 and north of Kings Highway. (see Daily GPI, Jan. 23) FECI, which is backed by private equity firm Fortress Investment Group, plans to get supplies from existing pipelines serving the area along the central Florida east coast near the Kennedy Space Center. Titusville is nicknamed “Space City.”

“The Titusville facility will be connected to the domestic natural gas supply market through an interconnection constructed by Florida Gas Transmission near existing lateral lines located south of the Titusville facility,” the filing said. American LNG also said in the filing that it currently has no long-term supply agreements or long-term export agreements.

Fortress, TICO and American LNG all are based at the same headquarters in New York City. The DOE filing said the project backers expect construction on the facility to begin later in February.

In the DOE filing, American LNG said the Titusville facility’s product would be delivered into ISO containers — truck or rail — for both the domestic and export customers. ISO containers destined for export would be loaded on container ships for “rollon/rolloff” ocean-going carriers for export at nearby Port Canaveral, near the NASA Space Center.

Likely destinations for the small LNG cargoes will be nations in the Caribbean and Central America that have FTAs, the DOE filing said. In a year-end 2014 notification to DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy, American LNG Marketing LLC said it eventually wants authority to export in tanks to both FTA and non-FTA nations.