Ingleside Energy Center LLC’s proposal to build and operate a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal on the Texas Gulf Coast and a companion proposal to construct pipeline facilities would have “limited adverse environmental impact,” FERC staff said last Thursday in its draft environmental impact statement on the related projects.

The planned $400 million LNG receiving terminal would be located on an 82-acre brownfield site in Ingleside, TX, where affiliate Occidental Petroleum Corp. has a large chemical manufacturing plant. The proposed facility would have the capability to unload 140 LNG ships a year, along with a send-out rate of 1 Bcf/d and regasification capability of 3.5 Bcf/d [CP05-13].

Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum has indicated that construction of the proposed Ingleside terminal would begin in either 2006 or 2007 (see NGI, April 26, 2004).

Occidental Petroleum said it plans to use only about 10% of the proposed send-out capacity from the terminal for its own operations, with the remainder of the LNG-sourced gas going directly into intrastate and interstate pipelines serving the southern, midwestern and eastern markets.

In a companion proposal, the newly formed San Patricio Pipeline LLC, also an Occidental affiliate, seeks to build a 26-mile, 1 Bcf/d pipeline that would extend from the proposed Ingleside facility along the Texas coast to interconnections with nine existing intrastate and interstate pipelines throughout the country [CP05-11].

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