Coral Energy of Houston bought a liquefied natural gas (LNG)cargo from the North West Shelf Venture in Australia for deliveryinto the United States. The cargo of about 2.9 Bcf is Coral’ssecond recent LNG purchase.

The LNG will be loaded (fob) in the fourth quarter 1999 atWithnell Bay, Western Australia, for delivery to CMS Energy Corp.’sCMS Trunkline LNG terminal in Lake Charles, LA. Terms of thetransaction were not released.

Coral entered the LNG import market in July 1999 with thepurchase of a Malaysian cargo of about 2.8 Bcf.

“LNG imports expand Coral’s supply portfolio and provide a goodfit with our asset infrastructure of intrastate gas pipe lines andgas storage facilities,” said Jim Whalen, Coral chief commercialofficer. “We expect to make additional LNG purchases by bringingthe value of Coral’s position in the US markets, our riskmanagement expertise and the financial strength of our AAA creditrating to the LNG producers.”

Coral, an affiliate of Shell, is among the five largest NorthAmerican wholesale gas marketers. North West Shelf Venture isoperated by Woodside Energy Ltd. of Australia.

In September, CMS Energy’s CMS Marketing, Services and Trading(CMS-MST) bought three LNG shipments from Ras Laffin LNG Co.Limited (Rasgas) in Qatar. The three cargoes, carrying a combined8.1 Bcf, will be delivered in November, December and February toCMS’ LNG complex in Lake Charles. The price of the shipments wasnot disclosed (see Daily GPI Sept. 2, 1999).

CMS said it expects up to 25 LNG shipments to be delivered intoits Trunkline system this year. With these latest deliveries, theLake Charles facility will total at least 24 shipments in 1999,five of which were purchased from Rasgas by CMS-MST. By comparison,the complex had 17 total shipments delivered in 1998.

CMS bought the Trunkline system from Duke Energy in November1998. Since the purchase, CMS has intensified the activity of theLake Charles facility. CMS-MST in April agreed to buy 9.3 Bcf ofLNG in several shipments from the North West Shelf LNG project inAustralia for delivery to the CMS Trunkline LNG facility.

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