Following its move earlier this month to abandon plans to build an offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal off North Baja, Chevron Corp. is actively pursuing existing and new sites on all three coasts of North America, a Houston-based spokesperson told NGI on Tuesday. Chevron is not saying how much it spent on the more than three-year-old Coronado Islands venture that had received a permit to build from Mexican authorities.

However, earlier in March at a Wall Street financial analyst conference hosted by the San Ramon, CA-based major oil/gas producer, Chevron’s senior gas executive painted a bullish picture of substantial growth globally in gas operations overall, driven a lot by LNG. Chevron has a $19.6 billion exploration/development and capital budget for this year, with $14.6 billion going for exploration, production and natural gas operations in the United States and globally.

“A key element of our resource base is our huge natural gas holdings,” said George Kirkland, executive vice president for upstream and gas businesses, speaking March 13 to the analysts in New York City. “We have a total of 140 Tcf of [proved and potential] natural gas resources.

“Underpinned by our extensive resource base, we are developing a diverse portfolio of LNG projects that will transform Chevron into a top-tier LNG player by 2015. Greenfield projects such as the Gorgon LNG project, Olokola LNG in Nigeria and the Angola LNG project as well as the Northwest Shelf expansions are cornerstones of this strategy.”

Globally, Chevron’s strategy is to build or secure regasification capacity to support its equity liquefaction projects, LNG trading business, and future growth opportunities. It has two other regasification deals in play elsewhere in the United States — 1 Bcf/d capacity reserved at Cheniere’s Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana, and federal approvals for another facility at Casotte Landing in Pascagoula, MS.

“We continue to evaluate a number of other potential sites for natural gas import terminals on the East, West and Gulf Coasts of North America,” said spokesperson Margaret Cooper.

After recently filing for permit waivers with three Mexican federal agencies — Comision Reguladora de Energia (CRE), the Mexican equivalent of the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC); Communication and Transport Secretariat; and Environmental/Natural Resources Secretariat, Cooper said Chevron’s decision to stop work on the project was strictly based on “business needs.”

She explained that the proposed Baja offshore project was developed with the intent of receiving supply from its share of the large LNG output off the Northwest Shelf of Australia in the Gorgon Field. In the meantime, Chevron has signed what Cooper called “Heads of Agreements” for a majority of its Gorgon gas share to its customers in Asia, and the rest of the Gorgon LNG will go to Chevron’s internal

Elsewhere, Chevron has two other major LNG supply projects, both in Africa — one in Angola (36.4% interest) with Sonangol, and the other in Nigeria (an 18.5% interest) with Olokola LNG. In addition, Cooper said Chevron is in the preliminary stages of evaluating potential LNG liquefaction facilities in the northeastern Plataforma Deltana region offshore Venezuela.

Kirkland said Asia-Pacific is the region with the largest commercial resources, including Australia. That is followed by North and South America, West Africa and Central Asia. Chevron is counting on growing gas products serving what he called “an ever-growing and more interconnected world market.”

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