Former Bechtel Senior VP joins Freeport LNG

Freeport LNG Development has appointed John M. Duty, Jr. to the Board of Directors of the company’s general partner as an independent director.

Duty, age 69, retired from Bechtel Corporation in 2009 after 40 years of service to the company, ultimately retiring as its Senior Vice President and Manager of Global LNG.

During his career with Bechtel, Duty served as Manager of Engineering, Project Manager, Operations Manager, Manager of the Houston Office and all US Regional Offices, President of Petroleum and Chemical Global Industry Unit, and Manager of Global LNG. Duty’s LNG experience included Project Manager on the P.T. Badak/Huffco LNG Train B Project in 1984 and Project Director of the Atlantic LNG Project in 1996. As Manager of Global LNG he provided leadership on all Bechtel’s LNG projects between 1996 and 2009. Duty has over 16 years of engineering, construction and project management experience in LNG on a worldwide basis during his career.

“I am delighted to welcome John to our Board,” said Michael S. Smith, Chairman of the Board of Directors at freeport LNG. “As we embark on the construction of our 3-train natural gas liquefaction and LNG export facility, John’s broad experience with construction of large-scale infrastructure projects, and LNG projects in particular, will be an invaluable asset. We appreciate his willingness to both serve as a director and lead our newly formed Construction Committee.”

In November 2014, Freeport LNG received final approvals for its proposed 3-train natural gas liquefaction and LNG export facility on Quintana Island near Freeport, Texas from the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy. With these approvals, Freeport LNG has received all authorizations required for construction of the initial 3-train liquefaction project and the export of the entire contracted LNG production volume of the initial three trains.

Also in November 2014, Freeport LNG closed financing and commenced construction of initial two trains of the liquefaction project under contracts awarded to a joint venture between CB&I, Inc. and Zachry Industrial, Inc. The first two trains are anticipated to commence operations 45 and 50 months from start of construction, respectively. Construction of a third train is expected to commence in the second quarter of 2015, with operations to begin approximately six months following the second train. Each liquefaction train has a nameplate design capacity of 4.64 million tonnes per annum. Approximately 13.2 million tonnes per annum of the production capacity of the three liquefaction trains has been contracted under use-or-pay liquefaction tolling agreements with Osaka Gas, Chubu Electric, BP Energy Company, Toshiba Corp. and SK E&S LNG.

Press Release; Image: Freeport LNG