Exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar’s Ras Laffan liquefaction plant have been lower over the past few days as two of the facility’s mega trains have been down, three industry sources said.
LNG exports daily flows moving average data from Refinitiv shows loadings were down for the past week, according to Olumide Ajayi, senior LNG analyst.
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Two of the sources said that train 6 and train 7 at the facility have been down since earlier this month, without adding details on the reason for the outage.
The outage at train 6 is expected to last 4 weeks until early March and is said to be regular maintenance, another source said.
Production capacity at the mega trains stands at 7.8 million ton per annum (mtpa) each.
Qatar Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted by Reuters after official working hours and ahead of the weekend in the Gulf.
The reason for the train 7 outage is unknown and analysts said it is not the regular time for planned maintenance, which usually happens between end of winter and start of summer, known as the shoulder months.
Analysts at Refinitiv said gas and LNG markets might to continue pricing in the bullish news around the Qatari outage and potential reduction in LNG arrivals to UK terminals in March.
Qatar, one of the world’s top LNG producers, has recently been approached by the US to reroute gas supplies to Europe in case Russia attacks Ukraine and the United States imposes sanctions on Moscow.
It has most of its volumes locked up under long-term contracts mostly to Asian buyers but also sends cargoes to Europe.
Qatar Energy plans to grow its LNG output by 40 percent with the north field expansion project, expected to come online by 2026.
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