Freeport LNG, the second-largest U.S. liquefied natural gas export facility, is on track to return to full LNG production, pulling in more than 2 billion cubic feet (bcf) of natural gas on Sunday, according to data from LSEG reported by Reuters.
The export plant has been offline for most of July after shutting down on July 7 ahead of the landfall of Hurricane Beryl in Texas.
Since the export facility became first operational, Freeport LNG's exports have been crucial for the market observers watching global LNG availability.
Last week, Europe's benchmark natural gas prices slumped to the lowest level in one week after Freeport LNG resumed some operations.
The Axios II LNG vessel has arrived at Freeport, indicating that the U.S. export plant has resumed operation, per ICIS cargo-tracking data cited last week by Tom Marzec-Manser, Head of Gas Analytics at ICIS.
Freeport LNG last loaded a cargo on July 5, before being taken offline ahead of the landfall of Hurricane Beryl.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, at least 10 cargoes are said to have been canceled from Freeport LNG.
In the week ending July 24, two vessels departed from the Freeport plant, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its latest Natural Gas Weekly Update on July 25, citing shipping data provided by Bloomberg Finance, L.P.
Fear of insufficient supply "is still ingrained in the market even though at present there is enough supply to go by," Florence Schmit, an energy strategist at Rabobank, told Bloomberg last week, commenting on the recent price moves in European natural gas prices.
The latest development in LNG supply and European natural gas prices shows the vulnerability of Europe's benchmark prices to supply outages.
Similar was the case in early June, when a sudden supply outage at an offshore connection hub for pipelines in Norway pushed Europe's prices soaring to their highest level in six months.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More