Federal regulators have authorized partial service to start on a small stretch of the pipeline that would feed natural gas to the Golden Pass LNG export project under construction south of Port Arthur, TX.

FERC approved Golden Pass Pipeline LLC’s (GPPL) request to start service on the MP 69 Compressor Station Free Flow Line. The roughly half-mile stretch would move up to 600,000 Dth/d as far south as the Golden Triangle Storage facility in Beaumont, TX, about 30 miles north of the Golden Pass liquefaction facility.

The free flow line would be isolated from construction of the rest of the GPPL facilities, which are expected to be finished this year to move 2.6 Bcf/d to the export plant. The Golden Pass terminal is also expected to be finished later this year, with first exports...