Berkshire Hathaway Energy Cove Point LNG export plant in Maryland back in service

Oct 13 - U.S. energy firm Berkshire Hathaway Energy's Cove Point liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant in Maryland returned to service on Sunday after a planned autumn maintenance outage, according to a company notice to customers and data from financial firm LSEG.

The amount of natural gas flowing to the plant, which shut around September 20, rose from about zero to 0.9 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on October 12, the LSEG data showed.

The plant can turn around 0.8 bcfd of gas into LNG. Plants often pull in more gas than they can turn into LNG since they use some of the fuel to run equipment.

One billion cubic feet is enough to supply about 5 million U.S. homes for a day.

U.S. LNG export plants typically shut for planned maintenance in the spring or autumn when global demand for gas for heating or cooling is lower than during the peak winter and summer months.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy is a unit of U.S. multinational conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway BRKa.N.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy operates Cove Point and owns 75% of the facility. The other 25% is owned by units of Brookfield Asset Management BAMa.TO.

Cove Point's LNG is sold under 20-year agreements to a subsidiary of GAIL (India) GAIL.NS and to ST Cove Point, which is a joint venture between units of Japanese trading company Sumitomo 8053.T and Tokyo Gas 9531.T.