LNG project development rarely struggles because of technology; it struggles because of decisions made during design, construction, commissioning, and start-up, often years before first gas flows. That is the consistent lesson the engineers at Alaska LNG Services LLC have taken from careers spanning liquefied natural gas (LNG), cryogenic facilities, oil and gas, chemical, air separation …

Many LNG plants are leaving production on the table because Joule-Thomson valve (JTV) and expander performance problems have been quietly accepted as normal. Compressors, gas turbines, and Main Cryogenic Heat Exchangers (MCHEs) receive exhaustive specification and performance testing—while the valves and expanders equally critical to production are rarely scrutinized at all. That asymmetry is where …

Routine flaring at an LNG plant is usually a symptom, not the root cause—the flare is telling you something about process control, equipment performance, and unit operation upstream of it. That is how the engineers at Alaska LNG Services LLC read a flare, and it changes where you look for the fix. The flare itself …

An LNG carrier is proven during sea trials and gas trials, not at the shipyard berth. Before a newbuild LNG carrier (LNGC) enters commercial service, every propulsion, cargo, auxiliary, and safety system must demonstrate—under witness—that it performs to the build specification and complies with the international rules the vessel will sail under. This case study …

Many countries have stringent regulations against the use and importation of asbestos.  e.g. Australia enforces a zero-tolerance ban on asbestos and any facility entering Australian waters must prove it is asbestos-free, not merely declare it. All forms of asbestos have been banned in Australia since December 31, 2003—import, manufacture, use, and sale—and at the border …

Proving marine assets can operate year-round in Arctic sea ice takes more than analytical modeling—it takes full-scale ice trials, instrumented hulls, and measured ice properties. That is how the engineers at Alaska LNG Services LLC approach cold-climate marine work, and this anonymized project from our engineers’ careers shows what the method looks like in practice. …

Arctic LNG Projects: The Calendar Is the Constraint, Not the Cold Arctic LNG projects are usually described as a temperature problem. In execution they are a calendar problem. The cold is knowable and can be engineered against; the season is fixed, short, and indifferent to the schedule. That is the difference an owner feels, and …

Class Is Not Compliance: Statutory and Classification Requirements for LNG Marine Facilities “In class with ABS” and “compliant” are not the same statement, and on LNG marine projects they are routinely used as if they were. Statutory requirements and classification requirements come from different authorities, are enforced by different parties, and fail in different ways. …

LNG Commissioning and Startup: What Commissioning Leaves Behind Commissioning and startup are usually described as the riskiest phase of an LNG project, and they are. But the framing understates the problem, because it implies the risk ends when the plant is running. It does not. Commissioning ends; its artifacts do not. Every temporary setting, widened …

Marine LNG Interfaces: Compatibility Is a Property of the Pair A terminal is not compatible with a class of vessel. It is compatible, or not, with a specific ship arriving in a specific condition at a specific berth. “The berth handles 174,000 m³ carriers” is a capacity statement. Compatibility is a finding about a pair, …