The Maritime Administration (MARAD) and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) have received an application from West Delta LNG for the licensing of a deepwater port.
The application proposes the ownership, construction, operation and eventual decommissioning of a deepwater port terminal in the Gulf of Mexico to export domestically produced natural gas.
In the nominal design case, the Venice pretreatment plant would process approximately 750 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) of feed natural gas for the proposed West Delta LNG deepwater port.
Based on an estimated production unit availability of 95.4 percent and an allowance for the consumption of feed gas during the liquefaction process, the proposed West Delta LNG deepwater port would nominally produce 5.0 mmtpa of LNG for export.
In the optimized case, the proposed project would process approximately 900 mmscfd of feed natural gas to produce approximately 6.1 mmtpa of liquefied natural gas for export, or the equivalent of 306 billion standard cubic feet per year of LNG.
The project would be capable of accommodating LNG tankers with the cargo capacity ranging from 30,000 cubic meters to 180,000 cubic meters of the chilled fuel.
The West Delta LNG deepwater port offshore and marine components would consist of an LNG production and storage unit, a loading platform and marine berth unit and support facilities.
The West Delta LNG deepwater port onshore components would consist of the proposed Venice pretreatment plant, which would be located in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana within the grounds of an existing 121-acre onshore natural gas processing facility known as the Venice gas complex.
The Venice pretreatment plant would receive natural gas from offshore Gulf of Mexico midstream pipelines and/or interstate pipeline feed gas from pipelines already interconnected with the Venice gas complex.