Kinder Morgan is consolidating its ownership of Elba Liquefaction Company (ELC) in the US with the acquisition of Royal Dutch Shell’s share.

Kinder

The energy infrastructure company, which already owns 51% in ELC, will buy Shell’s 49% interest and increase its investment in the project by $630m.

ELC owns the Elba Liquefaction Project, being planned to be constructed at the existing Elba Island LNG Terminal near Savannah, Georgia.

The acquisition will see Kinder increase its investment in all the liquefaction and terminal facilities at Elba Island to $2.1bn.

Shell will continue to subscribe to 100% of the liquefaction capacity at the project.
Kinder Morgan east region natural gas pipelines president Kimberly Watson said: "We are very pleased to purchase Shell’s equity interest in the joint venture and advance the project with Shell’s continued support and subscription to 100% of the capacity of our world-class Elba Island terminal.

The Elba Liquefaction Project was announced by Kinder’s arm Southern Liquefaction and Shell in January 2013.

The project is intended to add liquefaction and export capability to Kinder’s existing liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification terminal at Elba Island in Georgia.

Ten small-scale liquefaction units at the project will be purchased from Shell and integrated with the existing Elba Island facility.
Six liquefaction units will be installed in the first phase of the project and four in the second phase.

The Elba Express Pipeline and Elba Island LNG Terminal will be modified to transport natural gas to the terminal and to load the LNG onto ships for export.

Construction is expected to begin in the fourth quarter, subject to regulatory approvals, and the first production is likely to happen in late 2017.

Elba Liquefaction, with an estimated total annual capacity of approximately 2.5 million tones, has permits to export to Free Trade Agreement (FTA) countries. An application to export to non-FTA countries is pending with the Department of Energy.


Image: Natural gas pipeline of Kinder in the US. Photo: courtesy of Kinder Morgan.