A powerful earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter Scale struck Mexico Tuesday centered in the state of Guerrero near the Pacific Coast city of Acapulco and rattling Mexico City nearly 250 miles away. There were no initial reports of deaths and the nation’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminals appeared to be undamaged.

It was unclear if the new LNG receiving terminal at Manzanillo, about 500 miles to the north of Acapulco, had sustained any damage. The federal government-owned LNG terminal operated by Korean and Japanese companies received its first test cargo from Peru over the last weekend.

Farther away, the Sempra Energy Energia Costa Azul terminal near Ensenada on the north Pacific Coast of Baja California in Mexico reported to be unscathed by the quake, which happened more than 2,000 miles to the south and east.

A San Diego-based Sempra spokesperson told NGI that the Costa Azul LNG complex was unaffected by the quake. “The safety systems didn’t even register the movement,” said the spokesperson. The plant was similarly unaffected by a series of smaller quakes three years ago that were centered in the Gulf of California, much closer to the Sempra LNG facility (see Daily GPI, Aug. 7, 2009).

At that time the quakes ranged from 5.9 to 6.9 in magnitude, centered about 360 miles southeast of the U.S.-Mexico border. Those quakes had no impact on the Costa Azul LNG receiving terminal or connecting transmission pipelines, which cut across the northern-most stretch of North Baja. Sempra’s LNG facility is about 60 miles south of Tijuana and north of Ensenada.

In the immediate aftermath there was no concern about a tsunami, according to the Tsunami Warning Center, which emphasized that the epicenter for this event was well inland.

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