Osaka Gas Confident of US LNG Exports to Japan

Osaka Gas Co. is confident that it will be allowed to import liquefied natural gas to the Japan from the Freeport project in Texas, Dow Jones Newswire said citing a company executive.

Osaka Gas and Chubu Electric Power Co. signed in August last year a 20-year contract with Freeport LNG Development to import up to 2.2 million tpy each of LNG from Freeport's facility on the US Gulf Coast. The facility is slated to start operations in 2017.

The question of whether the US Department of Energy will approve the agreement has been of investor interest because the department said last year it wouldn't approve any plans to ship LNG to countries without a free-trade agreement with the US until it completed a review of natural gas shipments, including whether they will help create US jobs and offset trade imbalances.

"How much LNG the DOE will approve to export is an issue. But we are at the top of the line waiting for screening by DOE, in a position sure to get an approval," Koichiro Age, a general manager at Osaka Gas's LNG trading department, told Dow Jones Newswires.

A study commissioned by the DOE said in December that natural gas exports would benefit the US economy, leading to net economic gains that would outweigh the downside resulting from higher natural gas prices.