Trinidad and Tobago's flagship liquefied natural gas project, Atlantic LNG, will begin removing one of its liquefaction trains from operations in the last quarter this year, its director for capital projects, Michael Daniel, said on Tuesday.
The project's shareholders, including Shell, BP and Trinidad's National Gas Company, agreed to decommission train one due to a shortage of natural gas and because it was the most inefficient of the four plants that turn natural gas into LNG for export.
Train one has not been producing LNG for more than a year but it is still in operation because all the utilities, including the power that controls all four trains, reside in train one.
"The common utilities for the four trains were built out of train one so we have to be very careful how we segregate and reroute the utilities for the rest of the facilities, to ensure we don't shut down those facilities," Daniel said at an energy conference in Port of Spain.
The decommissioning of train one is not expected to disrupt Atlantic's remaining operations, Daniel said.
Atlantic LNG is an important part of Shell's and BP's LNG portfolio, with capacity to produce more than 5.5 million tonnes annually for each company.
The two companies provide the gas for Atlantic LNG and also earn revenue from tolling arrangements.
Atlantic LNG hopes to modernise the facility as it changes out control systems and electrical works, said Daniel.
"Train one is one of the early LNG plants built in the world and it will serve as a global benchmark on how we decommission future LNG plants," he told the conference.
In December, Atlantic exported 700,000 tonnes to various countries including the US and Canada, according to ship tracking data from financial firm LSEG.
(Reporting by Curtis Williams, Editing by Marianna Parraga, Nathan Crooks and Andrea Ricci)
