U.S. regulators raised doubts about Cheniere Energy’s decision to install higher-polluting gas-fired turbines at its Gulf Coast liquefied natural gas terminals in Texas and Louisiana years before they began operating, reports Reuters.
The documents show that Cheniere, the top U.S. LNG exporter, may have had a chance to avoid its current struggle with looming federal limits on emissions of formaldehyde and other dangerous chemicals.
The Texas-based company could be forced to undertake outages that might reduce or slow gas shipments to make expensive upgrades, potentially wiping out any cost savings made a decade ago when it disregarded concerns from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In June, Reuters reported that Cheniere asked President Joe Biden’s administration for an exemption from new curbs to be imposed later this year on emissions of cancer-causing chemicals like formaldehyde and benzene. The company said its gas-fired turbines are difficult to retrofit and such work could slow exports at a time of energy shortages in Europe. Read the entire story.
