Williams starts up Gulf Trace to serve Cheniere’s Sabine Pass LNG plant

Williams Partners started operations on Gulf Trace project, a 1.2 million dekatherm per day expansion of the Transco pipeline system to serve the Cheniere’s Sabine Pass liquefaction and export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana.

The Gulf Trace project allows Transco’s production area mainline and southwest Louisiana lateral systems to flow gas bi-directionally from Station 65 in St. Helena Parish, to Cameron Parish, where Cheniere’s facility is located. Cheniere has subscribed to all the firm capacity for the project.

“Projects like Gulf Trace, which leverage existing gas pipeline infrastructure, make it possible to connect abundant domestic supply with emerging international markets,” said Rory Miller, senior vice president of Williams Partners’ Atlantic-Gulf operating area.

He added that the company can take advantage of the fact that Transco pipeline passes through every U.S. state with an LNG export facility currently under construction.

Natural gas demand to serve LNG export facilities along the Transco pipeline is expected to grow by approximately 11,000 MDth/d by 2025.

In September 2016 the company filed an application seeking regulatory approval for its Gulf Connector expansion project, designed to deliver 475,000 dekatherms per day to feed two LNG export terminals in Texas, one located on the northern coast of Corpus Christi Bay in 2019, and another located on the coast of Freeport Bay in the second half of 2018.

The Gulf Trace project is part of approximately $1.6 billion in transmission growth projects Williams Partners plans to bring into service on its Transco pipeline system in 2017 that will help increase the pipeline’s capacity by approximately 3.0 million dekatherms per day. The Garden State, Dalton, Hillabee (Phase 1), Virginia Southside II and New York Bay Expansion projects are all under construction and/or expected to be placed in-service this year.