Sempra LNG’s two liquified natural gas receipt terminal projects are on track for completion next year while no decision will be taken this year on starting a third, president and chief executive Darcel Hulse said.

The $800-million Energia Costa Azul project in Baja California, Mexico, is 75 percent complete and the $750-million Cameron LNG project south of Lake Charles, Louisiana, is close to 50 percent complete, Hulse said.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the Institute of the Americas Latin American Energy Conference in La Jolla, California.
A final investment decision on an LNG terminal planned for Port Arthur, Texas, will not be made this year as supply is not yet available for the facility, which will cost more to build than the Louisiana terminal, he said.
New LNG supply is slow coming online because of a worldwide slowdown in infrastructure construction, Hulse said.
“We’re in a world of tight supply, not because of reserves, but because it’s difficult to get infrastructure built,” he said.
The Port Arthur terminal received federal regulatory approval in 2006.
The Costa Azul terminal is slated to take in 28.3 million cubic metres of liquified natural gas per day when it comes on line in the first quarter of 2008, Hulse said.
Sempra LNG, the liquified natural gas subsidiary of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, has been accused of seeking to evade California’s strict regulations by going south of the US border to build a Pacific Coast terminal.
“We went there because there was a need in Baja,” Hulse said. “They were at the end of the pipe flowing from north to south. They’ll be at the front of the pipe flowing from south to north.”
Storage tanks at the Costa Azul and Cameron terminals are being built to the highest standards in the industry and contain enough steel to build four duplicates of Paris’ Eiffel Tower, he said. The tanks are contained with giant cement structures.
The Cameron LNG project is planned to take in 42.5 million cubic metres of LNG a day.