natural gas prices dropped more than 16 tuesday after freeport lng the nations secondlargest exporter of liquefied natural gas said its plant that shut down last week due to an explosion probably wont be back to full operations until near the end of this year at this time completion of all necessary repairs and a return to full plant operations is not expected until late 2022 the company said in an emailed statement given the relatively contained area of the facility physically impacted by the incident a resumption of partial operations is targeted to be achieved in approximately 90 days the frontmonth natural gas contract for july delivery was recently trading 161 lower at 7225mmbtu which is still about double the price of natural gas at the start of this year the fire happened wednesday morning at freeports liquefaction plant on quintana island on texass gulf coast near houston which normally receives by pipeline about 2 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas about 20 of total us lng feedgas demand and then turns it into lng there were no injuries and the fire was rather quickly put out the company said initially that the plant would be shut for at least three months so the news of even a partial restart not happening for at least three more months created a selloff tuesday morning as overall lng feedgas demand is reduced from a market perspective the news transforms the 2022 injection season outlook and will lift the injection season storage trajectory by 150200 bcf to alleviate the majority of shortage concerns through winter 202223 said ebw analyst eli rubin before the freeport news the market was short on supply in a highdemand market without any easy way of addressing shortages the freeport news in one fell swoop slashed shortage risks through the upcoming winter to manageable levels freeport said the incident occurred in pipe racks that support the transfer of lng from the facilitys lng storage tank area to the terminals dock facilities none of the liquefaction trains lng storage tanks dock facilities or lng process areas were impacted it added based on preliminary observations the company said the incident seems to be the result of the overpressure and rupture of a segment of an lng transfer line leading to the rapid flashing of lng and the release and ignition of the natural gas vapor cloud additional investigation is underway to determine the underlying precipitating events that enabled the overpressure conditions in the lng piping freeport added