Explosion at liquefied natural gas plant in Freeport Texas 7

[FacEngrPE]

LNG Plant Explosion 06/10/22, Farm Journal
Raw video: Small explosion at Freeport LNG plant in Quintana
VIDEO: Explosion at Texas LNG Plant by Andreas Exarheas, Rigzone Staff, Thursday, June 09, 2022

This event could have been much worse, outage is initially expected to be 3 weeks. Significant upward pressure of natural gas futures in Europe and downward pressure on US futures.

 

[electricpete]

I don't think that view in the video really gives a proper perspective for how big those three tanks and 10 fans are (and accordingly how big the cloud from the blast was). The placement of the pond and the houses in the foreground give the false impression these tanks and fans are much smaller than they actually are.

You can see those tanks and fans from the bridge between Freeport and Surfside, looking towards Quintana. I'm not sure how to describe them, except... huuuuge.

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[1503-44]

Caught a 6ft long alligator gar in the channel on the left after the bridge. At 4am, after finally seeing its head under the lantern 2ft away, first thought was alligator!

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[FacEngrPE]

This image has something that looks like a missing section of pipe and elbow.

from

https://youtu.be/4--mTJJIFmY?t=19

Google map images of the two Freeport TX locations, Huge may be an understatment.
Liqufication and export facility
Pretreatment facility and noble gas extraction facility.

The attachment is a copy of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission FREEPORT LNG NOBLE GAS PROJECT Environmental Assessment December 2020, it might put one of the site activities into perspective.

 

[electricpete]

1503-44 a 6' alligator gar sounds scary enough, especially in the dark. Myself, I've spent some time kayaking a little bit up the coast - Christmas Bay and San Luis Pass area, but I always try to stay far away from the industrial areas. I'm just a little bit intimidated when I try to imagine what it would be like to be on the channel in a kayak when a big barge or tanker comes by.

FacEngrPE - I think this picture gives a good perspective. Look at the trucks in lower left for scale

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[1503-44]

268 ft diam measured in Google Earth.
100ft high estimated from number of stairway flights to top.
6MM(Actual)CF (150,000 m3)?

At a gas to liquid conversion of 600:1, its 3T scf/tank.
At US Production of 100BCFD, its 30 days/tank.
Typical LNG ship capacity is 125,000 to 260,000 m3, so tank sizes are right about in the middle of that range.

I did some work at the SPR Bryan Mound site back on the Brazos and I used to fish the San Luis too, back when it was a KOA camper land, but preferred the mouth of the Brazos and Colorado rivers and Lavaca Bay. Wade fishing the Colorado on the sand bar about a half mile out, before they built the jetty, with a load of trout on a my stringer, a large blackfin passed me by at about 20ft. Time to get out the hell out of the water. It was known to be frequented by some very large sharks. That scared me more than both the alligator and the time I got hit by a wake and washed off the Galveston jetty ... about 2 miles out. Used to watch the guys bring their girlfriends to KOA on Friday night, then turn up on Saturday night fishing with the wife and kids. Ah yes. Life before Internet and mobile phones.

 

[georgeverghese]

Is this Freeport Company related to the giant Freeport McMoran copper/gold mine Company in West Papua - Indonesia ?

https://youtu.be/jwxJwul0TQs

 

[1503-44]

No. Its this one.

https://freeportlng.com/about/corporate-history

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[electricpete]

Interesting, that link has a good timeline of how Freeport LNG switched from an import terminal to an export terminal. I guess the infrastructure providing access to ships and pipelines at that location was unchanged. But the conversion equipment changed significantly. They had to add compressors and fan coolers. Working at an electric generating plant in Texas (using a fuel that is not gas), we considered that a positive development in our business environment because not only did it tend to increase the price of gas used by competing generators, but it also added electrical load of up to 690MW.

Freeport LNG requires 690 megawatts (MW) of electric power supply to operate three liquefaction trains, almost 9 times the Freeport area’s previous load, which was less than 80 MW. Several electric transmission upgrades (including Jones Creek transmission project) were implemented on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas electric power grid to connect transmission lines with Freeport LNG to accommodate the additional load requirements.

Again, strange choice to use electric motor driven compressors instead of gas driven, although I'm not sure what share of the load that is.


=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[1503-44]

The electric drive choice was probably made to avoid exhaust emissions at the site, which conveniently transfers that burden to whomever is doing the electric generation, but since they're also selling 690MW, I'm sure that's included in that cost. Everyone's happy ... even the nukes.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[JohnRBaker]

And now there's speculation that this was the result of a hack by Russian operatives:

Did Russian hackers blow up a Texas LNG pipeline on June 8?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/did-russian-hackers-blow-up-a-texas-lng-pipeline

This issue is being raised because Russia sees the US exporting of LNG to Europe as being a direct threat to their control over the energy supplied to Europe.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[1503-44]

Russia is creating their own threat to their control of EU energy. Before Russia's invasion they had direct control over EU energy and the EU was happy about having a secure, nearby energy source. I would not say that now, in fact the exact opposite, Freeport LNG (USA) has more control over EU future energy supply than Russia does. Russia might as well be pumping mustard gas. Nordstream II is dead and Nordstream I is on life support. If Russia ever wanted control over EU energy stocks, then Ukraine invasion is the biggest blunder since Coka Cola New.

I've said before that Russia didn't want any control of EU energy source, they just wanted to sell gas. What they wanted was for the USA to stop messing with Georgia and Ukraine and for the USA to drop their sanction and threats concerning Nordstream II, because that interfered with their gas sales business. With sanctions getting worse by the minute on Nordstream II, and US advisors all over the Ukraine, what did Russia have to lose, except the Ukraine itself, which they saw as even worse result than losing their already essentially lost gas sales. I don't think the war is justified, but neither can I say that its entirely on Putin. Push a psychopath too far and sh*t happens. What we are seeing is the oil companies winning again, even though everyone else is losing. Hummm.... I'm getting that ole deja vu feeling. Oil company profits up, USA sells more gas. Europe pays. USA proves that Russia was indeed a sheep in wolf's clothes. When all the pieces fit so nicely together, I suspect that the puzzle has been gamed many times over. My butt itches.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[electricpete]

jrb - your link didn't work but this one works for me:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/did-russian-hackers-blow-up-a-texas-lng-pipeline

I can see where suspicion falls in that direction regardless of the actual cause, so I’m going to keep an open mind waiting for investigation results.

No doubt Russia’s effort backfired in terms of effect on both Europe’s security posture and Europe’s energy posture. If Russia envisioned they would be needing to leverage Europe’s energy dependence to coerce them, they probably would have been better served to attack in the Fall (due to much higher demand in winter).


In terms of not foreseeing correctly, one wonders if we (the US) could go back in time to early February when our intelligence knew what was coming, knowing what we know now about the effects and duration of the war to-date, would we have been better served to bring more to the negotiating table? While I’m reluctant to suggest anything that rewards aggressive behavior, I lean towards saying yes.

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Sorry, I had the wrong link (I've corrected it).

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[1503-44]

I don't think anything backfired, except the 3 day blitzkraig war plan. That didn't work.
Otherwise, it's not reasonable to assume that nobody at the Kremlin can connect the dots to reach this point. Russia didn't think that sanctions would happen? No, they were expecting them. They had already made a deal with China to take as much oil as possible (my conjecture, but surely included in the "Friends Forever Deal"). Nordstream sanctions were already imminent, except for Germany's strong objection and last minute deal with the US to stop them at the NATO conference in late winter. Russia already knew that there were ways to deal with sanctions. Today they make more selling less oil and everyone in the west is paying for that, proving again that sanctions simply do not work. Cuba still exists. Iran is building nukes. NKorea is nearly launching them. (Except they do work for big oil.) Even Ted Cruz (or his big oil bosses) had connected those dots a long time ago. Everything is right exactly on track, albeit with a few delays in taking Kiev.

I think the above scenario works, exactly because it does not rely on underestimating the opponents ability to connect any dots at any point. No mistakes, just delays in the schedule execution.

What negotiations? Nobody was or still today seriously talking to their opposing sides. What've we got to bring to what table? We'll start buying your gas again, but at the old price? The only real backfire I see is ... the sanctions. Oops. As Pogo used to say, "We have met the enemy and he is us"

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[TugboatEng]

Obviously the choice to go electric was to improve the appearance of the plant on paper. These types of actions are why I can't get behind the green movement. It isn't real. With a gas turbine plants they could have used cogeneration to reduce their real CO2 footprint. The obvious course would be heat recovery steam generators to make electricity but I wonder if absorption cycle refrigeration would be of benefit for liquifying the gas?

 

[1503-44]

Chances are a similar system, or nuclear, is being used to generate their purchased power, so it does not really matter where it is generated, as long as it isn't by oil or coal fired, or otherwise dirty sources, plus supposedly there are advantages in the economy of scale combining loads into large centralised power plants. Its probably a good base load. Costs are lower, efficiencies are better and concentrated emissions are easier to clean up and capture if such be the case. Actually better to do that in the end, if you can. The key is more the availability of a reliable grid power source. When a reliable source of 690MW is not available (Texas Grid ???), fine, generate your own power on site. Otherwise its usually cheaper to buy off the shelf.

Most large scale liquification plants are using Air Products proprietary technology.

https://www.airproducts.com/company...pment-selected-for-expansion-project-in-qatar

https://www.qatargas.com/english/operations/lng-trains

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[georgeverghese]

Suspect this plant is running on the Conoco Phillips cascade process for LNG liquifaction

http://static.conocophillips.com/files/resources/smid_016_gastechelectricmotorpaper.pdf

 

[MJCronin]

JohnRBaker; From LinkedIn: ... an update

Reports that a Russian cyber attack might have been behind the explosion and fire at the Freeport LNG explosion are unfounded, the company recently said.

“While our ongoing investigation continues, a cyberattack was ruled out as the cause within days of the incident,” Browne said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “After a thorough assessment of our network, our internal cyber detection systems have been confirmed to have been functioning properly and do not indicate any manipulation or compromise of our security solutions.”

Freeport LNG released information last week that the LNG piping became overpressured and believes the issue occurred in the pipe racks supporting the transfer of LNG from the storage tank area to the terminal’s dock facilities on the Intracoastal Waterway or north side of Freeport LNG’s dock basin.

https://thefacts.com/news/article_c9da6301-a0e9-52bd-8f08-2a692917cb6a.html

..... So now it looks like it's the Pipe Racks !!!! .... It's always those damn troublesome pipe racks !!

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..............

I still put my money on a piece of renegade carbon steel pipe that was welded into a cryo system by two TEXAS pipefitters named Jethro and Billy Bob .... They ran out of the 304 stainless pipe that was required for the job ..... so they used an old "pup piece" that they found out in the "back boneyard"

Jethro was heard to say: "Uh pipe iz uh pipe !, Ah reconn .... Ain't no sense in a-payinn my mind to no fancy "Pee-an-Eye-Dees" !!!!



MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[1503-44]

Nope. I'm betting on a minimum of 10,000 ft of it.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[electricpete]

An update to the article Thursday afternoon, after Freeport LNG’s statement, added the Quintana site does not have the Operation Technology/Industrial Control Systems network detection systems necessary to detect XENOTIME’s ICS-targeting TRITON malware and a cyberattack cannot be ruled out.

I think it's just going to be awhile for a confident diagnosis of the cause to emerge one way or another.

But yeah... Jethro and Billy Bob are probably at the top of the list!

I actually work with someone who calls himself "Jim Bob" (having grown up in the northeast, it's hard for me to get used to saying that name with a straight face, but it doesn't faze the locals one bit).

You can see those tanks and fans from the bridge between Freeport and Surfside, looking towards Quintana. I'm not sure how to describe them, except... huuuuge.

As it turns out, I went over that bridge on a beautiful sunny day last Friday on the way up the coast to Galveston. My wife was driving (as she's wont to do... she thinks she's the better driver within our marriage... my vote is D.K. effect for self-evaluation of driving abilities applies to her but certainly not to me). So I grabbed a snapshot from the passenger side window looking over the cement siderail of the bridge (attached).




=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?