CB&I Announces Successful Start-up and Operation of Peru LNG

CB&I announced today that PERU LNG has successfully produced its first cargo of LNG.

CB&I is the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the full scope of the project, the first LNG liquefaction plant in South America.

Hunt Oil Company is the owner and operator of PERU LNG, partnering with SK Energy of South Korea, Spain’s Repsol YPF and Marubeni of Japan.

The project is located in the remote Pampa Melchorita area about 170 kilometers south of Lima.

‘CB&I has been an outstanding partner on the PERU LNG project,’ said Ray L. Hunt, Chairman and CEO of Hunt Oil Company.

‘We applaud them for their great success in bringing this project in on time and under budget with a safety record that is ten times better than the industry norm.’

The plant, with capacity of approximately 4.5 million tons per year, cools the natural gas to -160°C (-260°F), reducing the volume by approximately 600 times to facilitate storage and transportation.

The liquefaction plant utilizes a propane pre-cooled mixed component refrigerant process, four refrigeration compressors, two gas turbines and associated systems.

In addition, CB&I constructed a gas treatment plant, power generation utilities, two 130,000 cubic meter LNG storage tanks, the topsides of the 1,300 meter trestle and the ship loading facilities.

CB&I directly employed more than 5,600 workers at peak construction on the project, which indirectly supported another 25,000 local jobs.

About 90% of CB&I’s workforce was comprised of Peruvian employees who spent nearly one million hours in training to learn the necessary skills and safety procedures required for a project of this magnitude.

Employees achieved an outstanding safety record, working more than 27 million hours on the jobsite with a lost-time incident rate of 0.01.

‘It has been a privilege to be part of this major project, which has helped generate strong economic development in Peru,’ said Philip K. Asherman, President and CEO.

‘I would like to thank and congratulate our project workforce for an outstanding safety performance and exceptional productivity and work quality.

PERU LNG’s great success further enhances CB&I’s EPC track record across the full LNG value chain, from gas processing to liquefaction on through regasification.’

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Source: CB&I, June 22, 2010;