Cheniere Sabine Pass trims LNG output after production line outage

By Curtis Williams

HOUSTON, April 2 (Reuters) - Cheniere Energy's LNG.N Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas plant in Louisiana is taking on reduced flows of natural gas amid an outage at one of its production units, according to data from financial firm LSEG and sources.

Sabine Pass, the largest LNG plant in theU.S., can process over 5 billion cubic feet of gas per day. It asked to receive only 2.6 billion cubic feet on Thursday, LSEG data showed.

At least one production train at Sabine Pass is down as the company performs maintenance work, two people with knowledge of Cheniere's operations told Reuters. They said the work should be completed on Thursday and begin ramping up production by Friday.

Cheniere said that it doesn't comment on day-to-day operations or commercial activities. The company is the largest U.S. LNG exporter and said last month it expects to export 51 million metric tons of the superchilled gas this year.

The outage comes amid tight worldwide supply for LNG, with about 20% of global capacity offline as a result of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East that has forced Qatar to shut in production.