American Oil and Gas Reporter - February 2015 - 153

U.S. LNG Potential Fuels Global Boom
HOUSTON-The global liquefied natural gas industry placed a record number
of ship construction orders in 2014, driven
by the prospect of huge volumes of U.S.
exports, Wood Mackenzie says in its annual analysis, LNG: 2014 in Review.
Andrew Buckland, Wood Mackenzie's
principal analyst for LNG shipping, says
companies placed 67 orders, despite declining charter rates. He adds 2014 topped
the record of 52 orders placed in 2011.
The 2014 review comes in the 50th
year of the LNG industry, which Wood
Mackenzie says began on Oct. 12, 1964,
when the Methane Princess delivered the
world's first commercial LNG cargo from
Algeria to the United Kingdom's Canvey
Island regasification terminal.
Across the world, the study says, LNG
production increased 5 million metric
tons a year in 2014, to 246 MMt/y, and
higher levels of re-exports boosted overall
trade. "But the big surprise was that Asian
LNG demand was much lower than expected. Demand in emerging markets,
such as China, failed to grow to the extent
anticipated, and demand in the established
South Korean market fell considerably,"
says Giles Farrer, Wood Mackenzie's prin-

cipal analyst for global LNG.
Lower Asian demand contributed to
the crash in LNG spot prices in 2014,
Wood Mackenzie says, which saw prices
fall from a peak above $20 an MMBtu in
February to less than $10 an MMBtu at
Thanksgiving. The analysis points to new
supplies from ExxonMobil's Papua New
Guinea (PNG) project and reduced Asian
demand as the main factors in the Pacific
Basin's long supply situation. The sharp
tumble in Brent oil prices only exacerbated
LNG's drop, Wood Mackenzie asserts.
New Pacific Supply
According to Wood Mackenzie's analysis, 2014 was the year in which the longawaited wave of new Pacific LNG supply
capacity finally started to arrive. In addition
to the PNG project, it says Sonatrach
began production at its Algerian Arzew
GL3Z train in October, and BG Group
began 2015 by shipping its first cargoes
from its Australian Queensland Curtis
project on Jan. 5. Against that, the report
notes Angola LNG's plant, which started
in June 2013, stopped exporting in May
2014.
Major final investment decision (FID)

announcements in the second half of
2014 were all U.S.-focused, the analysis
says, citing federal authorizations for
Cameron LNG's Hackberry, La., facility;
Dominion Resources' Cove Point, Md.,
liquefaction terminal; and two trains at
Freeport LNG's Quintana Island, Tx.,
terminal. Cheniere Energy also announced
a string of sales contracts for its Corpus
Christi, Tx., facility, finishing the year
with 8.5 MMt/y in commitments.
Wood Mackenzie adds that a change
in U.S. policy toward approving exports
to non-FTA countries would benefit those
projects that are more advanced in their
federal filings.
Floating LNG activity also has increased, Wood Mackenzie says. Integrated
energy company PETRONAS completed
an FID on its second floating LNG vessel
in January and Golar LNG signed a heads
of agreement on Dec. 24 with Perenco
for a near-shore project in Cameron. In
addition, use of floating storage and regasification units boomed, the firm says,
with new facilities installed in Brazil, Indonesia and Lithuania, and vessels committed to projects in Pakistan, Egypt,
Uruguay and Columbia.
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Smaller NGV Tanks Might Be Possible
HOUSTON-Findings in a study by
Rice University may offer some insight
about how to make natural gas vehicles'
fuel tanks more practical.
According to the university, the U.S.
Department of Energy has encouraged
researchers to look for new materials to
store compressed natural gas in light vehicles, instead of relying on smaller versions of the same tanks that are used on
buses and trucks. Among the possible
candidates is cage-like synthetic macromolecules called metal organic frameworks
(MOFs), Rice researchers state.
"MOFs are nanoscale compounds of
metal ions or clusters known as secondary
building units (SBUs) and organic binding
ligands, or linkers," the university clarifies.
"These linkers hold the SBUs together in
a spongy network that can capture and
store methane. As the pressure on the
methane tank is relieved, the network releases the gas for use. But, there are tens
of thousands of possible MOFs, so synthesizing them for testing is difficult."
Although many researchers use computers to model candidates with the right
qualities, Rice bioengineer Michael Deem
confirms that he and his team have used

a custom algorithm to design new MOF
configurations with a high deliverable
capacity, and ones that can be synthesized
reliably from commercial precursor molecules. Also, the algorithm keeps track
of the routes to synthesis, the university
reports.
According to the Rice team's results,
MOFs show potential for applications
such as drug delivery, sensing, purification
and catalysis; however methane storage
for transportation is high on the DOE's
wish list. "MOFs are being commercialized for methane storage in vehicles now,"
Deem says.
MOF's advantages as a storage medium
include more capacity than the heavy, highpressure cylinders common with CNG use,
university researchers suggest.Lower pressures mean lighter and smaller tanks, Deem
adds. They also may allow customers to
fill from household gas supply lines.
The Rice group says its algorithm has
been adapted from an earlier project to
identify zeolites. The researchers ran calculations on nearly 57,000 precursor molecules, modifying them with synthetic
chemistry reactions to find the one with
the best deliverable capacity.

"Our work differs from previous efforts
because we are searching the space of
possible MOF linkers specifically for this
deliverable capacity," Deem comments.
"We are eager to start testing the best
MOF models. We are very keen to work
with experimental groups, and happy to
collaborate. We have joint projects under
way, so we hope some of these predicted
materials will be synthesized very soon."
According to the university, Yi Bao, a
graduate student in Deem's lab at Rice's
BioScience Research Collaborative, is the
study's lead author. Co-authors are Richard
Martin and Maciej Haranczyk of the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
and Cory Simon and Berend Smit of the
University of California-Berkeley. Deem
is chair of Rice's Department of Bioengineering and the John W. Cox Professor of
Biochemical and Genetic Engineering.
The DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences,
Geosciences and Biosciences, supported
the research, the university confirms. The
researchers confirm they have utilized
the National Science Foundation-funded
DAVinCi supercomputer.
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FEBRUARY 2015 153

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