Mexican LNG backers tout environmental benefits
Developing export capacity for liquefied natural gas from Mexico offers environmental benefits because of shorter routes to Asia, project backers said October 25.
Mexico Pacific Limited (MPL) is the lead developer of the North American LNG export project on the Gulf of California. MPL said it entered into a collaborative agreement with the LNG arm of ConocoPhillips and engineering firm Bechtel to look for lower-carbon LNG design solutions for future phases of the Mexican LNG facility.
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MPL is approaching a final investment decision on a facility that could export as much as 14.1mn mt/year of LNG from a site that can draw on gas from the Permian basin across the border in Texas and from Mexico’s San Juan basin.
“The MPL LNG project’s strategic location on the west coast of Mexico will, by itself, result in lower greenhouse gas emissions due to shorter transit to Asian markets as compared to many other Gulf of Mexico and Pacific basin LNG producers in addition to lower greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the use of leading technologies,” MPL said.
MPL said it would draw on the technologies developed by Conoco and designed by Bechtel that could lower greenhouse gas emissions even further.
“We are constantly evolving our business strategies to further reduce our carbon footprint, and this cutting-edge initiative provides opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by seeking to curtail the production of emissions, rather than just capturing or reporting them,” said MPL president Douglas Shanda.
Adopting similar arguments advanced by other potential exporters of natural gas to Asia from North America’s west coast, backers of the Alaska LNG project released a report earlier this month detailing the “significant environmental and climate benefits” the project would achieve.
The report, prepared for the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC) by an independent team of third-party air quality, environmental and energy experts, documents how exports by Alaska LNG would cut annual CO2emissions by a representative Asian regional coal supply chain by some 77mn metric tons, a reduction of about 50%.