BHP Billiton, Australia, intends to file applications with the United States Coast Guard/Maritime Administration (MARAD) and the California State Lands Commission to construct and operate a liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification facility. The facility would be located more than 20 miles from Oxnard off the Ventura County coast and would be developed by BHP Billiton LNG International, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of BHP Billiton. This deepwater facility, named Cabrillo Port, would be the receiving point for shipments of California-bound LNG. Cabrillo Port would be a permanently moored facility – a floating storage and regasification unit, or FSRU. LNG will be stored onboard in traditional LNG storage tanks and will be converted to natural gas through a heat exchange system, and then transported by an undersea natural gas pipeline into the existing pipeline system of the local gas utility.
The FSRU design features three “Spherical Tanks” — LNG storage tanks — with the capacity to store the equivalent of 6 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The FSRU will contain eight vaporizers to enable the conversion — or regasification — of up to 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. Anticipated average send-out will be approximately 800 million cubic feet per day, or almost 15% of what California requires every day.
BHP Billiton expects the design, fabrication and installation of necessary facilities to allow for operations to commence by 2008.
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