(Reuters) – U.S. regulators sent another list of questions seeking information to Freeport LNG on Monday, as they evaluate its request to restart full commercial operations of its export facility in Texas.
Last month, the privately held LNG export facility, the second-biggest in the U.S., started to exit an eight-month outage that was caused by a fire in June 2022.
Freeport requested authorization from regulators late last month to progress to full commercial operations on the last of its three gas-liquefaction units, after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave approval for partial restart of the other two of those units.
FERC and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) sought answers on operating conditions and steps taken to improve safety.
The request asked for “a status update on Freeport LNG’s hiring efforts to address operator fatigue and training status of the new hires,” according to FERC’s letter to Freeport.
The fiery blast that knocked the facility offline last June resulted from inadequate operating and testing procedures, operator fatigue and other shortcomings, a review found.
(Reporting by Deep Vakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
