OREANDA-NEWS. The sixth LNG commissioning cargo from the 25mn t/yr Sabine Pass facility in the US is going to Portugal.

The 174,000m? Creole Spirit left the US liquefaction plant on 15 April and is expected to arrive in Portugal on 26 April. It is the first cargo from Sabine Pass to go to Europe.

The destinations of the five previous commissioning cargoes from train 1 were Brazil, Argentina, India and Asia-Pacific. Brazil received two of the cargoes, with one each going to the other three destinations.

Brazil's state-controlled Petrobras bought most of the train 1 commissioning cargoes, market sources said. The company has previously used Portugal's 4mn t/yr Sines terminal for storage and then re-exported cargoes, rather than regasifying the LNG for Brazil's domestic gas grid.

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has authorised US producer Cheniere Energy, which is building five liquefaction trains at Sabine Pass, to introduce feed gas and refrigerants into the second liquefaction train at the Sabine facility.

The five liquefaction trains at Sabine Pass will each have a base-load capacity of 4.5mn t/yr, equivalent to about 620mn ft3/d (17.5mn m3/d) of gas, and peak capacity of 5mn t/yr.

Train 2 will likely produce a similar number of test cargoes as train 1. Cheniere is expected to sell the test cargoes in the spot market.