The amount of natural gas flowing to the Cameron LNG export plant in Louisiana dropped on Tuesday, just one day before Tropical Storm Francine was expected to hit the Louisiana coast near Cameron as a hurricane, data from financial firm LSEG showed.

Officials at Cameron LNG were not immediately available for comment on the reason for the reduction.

LSEG said the amount of pipeline gas flowing to Cameron fell to 1.3 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on Tuesday from about 2.2 bcfd on Monday. That compares with an average of 2.1 bcfd over the past week.

One billion cubic feet of gas is enough to supply about five million homes for a day.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) projected Francine will strengthen into a hurricane on Tuesday before hitting the Louisiana coast on Wednesday. Louisiana is home to three of the nation’s seven big LNG export plants, including Cameron.

Cameron LNG’s partners include units of U.S. energy company Sempra Energy SRE.N, Japanese corporate groups Mitsui & Co 8031.T and Mitsubishi 8058.T, France’s TotalEnergies TTEF.PA and Japanese shipping line Nippon Yusen KK (NYK Line) 9101.T, according to the Cameron website.

With over 75% of U.S. gas production coming from big inland shale basins like Appalachia in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio and the Permian in West Texas and eastern New Mexico, analysts said hurricanes were more likely to reduce gas prices by cutting demand through power outages and knocking LNG export plants out of service.

That is different from 20 years ago when 20% of the nation’s gas came from the federal offshore Gulf of Mexico. Back then, Gulf Coast hurricanes usually caused gas prices to spike, but now that offshore region produces only about 2% of the country’s gas.

In addition to the 2.0-bcfd Cameron, the other big LNG export plants operating in Louisiana are Cheniere Energy’s LNG.N 4.5-bcfd Sabine Pass and Venture Global LNG’s 1.6-bcfd Calcasieu Pass.

So far on Tuesday, Sabine was on track to pull in about 4.6 bcfd of feedgas, about the same as on Monday, and Calcasieu was on track to pull in about 1.4 bcfd of feedgas, also around the same as on Monday, according to LSEG data.

LNG plants pull in more gas than they can turn into LNG because they use some of that gas to fuel equipment.

Officials at Cheniere and Venture Global were not immediately available for comment.

In addition to Calcasieu Pass, Venture Global was also in the process of testing parts of its new 2.6-bcfd Plaquemines LNG export plant in Louisiana.

Analysts have said they expect Plaquemines to produce its first LNG and export its first cargo in test mode later this year.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Scott DiSavino; editing by Jason Neely and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)