US liquefied natural gas exporters now will be required to report the country or countries where it is delivered, rather than the end-use country, the US Department of Energy announced in a Dec. 19 policy statement. With this reporting requirements change, domestic exporters still will need to continue the current ban on LNG shipments to sanctioned countries, it emphasized.
“With the US now being the world’s top oil and gas producer, it is imperative that US companies have all the tools they need to get their LNG into the international market,” US Energy Sec. Rick Perry said. “By streamlining the destination reporting requirements, [DOE] is taking an important deregulatory step forward.”
DOE also proposed an interpretive rule to clarify which types of supply and sales contract agreements need to be reported and when they must be filed. Its current regulations require all long-term LNG export authorization holders to report all long-term (greater than two years) supply and sales contracts. Public comments will be accepted until Jan. 18, 2019, DOE indicated in a Federal Register notice.