The deadly explosion at the liquefied natural gas (LNG) complex in Skikda, Algeria in January “should not be a basis for scare-mongering” attacks in the United States against the fuel, said the Algerian ambassador to the U.S. last Tuesday.

The LNG itself was not the cause of the blast, Idriss Jazairy told NGI following the Natural Gas Roundtable in Washington, DC. Rather, it appears to have been “the result of the convergence of three random factors:” 1) a leak in an LNG pipeline; 2) the leak occurred in a confined space; and 3) the confined space housed an open-fire boiler, he said.

“It’s still [in the] early days to make a final assessment,” but it seems that when the vapors of the LNG were absorbed by the boiler, they were transformed into ordinary gas, which then prompted the explosion that killed up to 30 people, Jazairy said. “This is what people consider as a gut feeling at this stage” of the investigation.

“I think that it is important not to jump to conclusions…because ultimately the consumers would have to pay a higher price for the fuel.”

Algeria, the second largest exporter of LNG in the world, began exporting to the United States in the 1970s, but shipments were reduced when the domestic industry scaled back its LNG operations. “We are looking forward to resuming substantial exports of LNG to the U.S.,” Jazairy said.

The cost of rebuilding the LNG liquefaction trains that were destroyed in the Skikda blast could approach as much as $800 million, according to an analysis brief issued by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) last Tuesday.

Algeria’s energy minister “has promised to build two new LNG trains in Skikda, with double the capacity of the three destroyed units and utilizing the most advanced technology,” the Department of Energy (DOE) agency said.

Three of the six liquefaction trains at Skikda that were heavily damaged accounted for 11% of Algeria’s total LNG capacity, the EIA said. Overall, Skikda handles about one-quarter of Algeria’s total LNG exports, with a nameplate capacity of 230 Bcf per year prior to the accident. Most of the LNG exported from Skikda is earmarked for markets in Western Europe (mostly France).

Two of the three undamaged LNG liquefaction trains at Skikda will be restarted by April, a senior official with the state-owned oil and gas company Sonatrach told The Wall Street Journal last week. The third undamaged train, which needs a “little more work to cut the linkage with the damaged trains,” would probably be back in operation in July, the Sonatrach executive said.

Sonatrach is expected to report on the LNG accident at the worldwide LNG conference in Qatar next month. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is looking into the cause of the deadly explosion as well.

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