UPDATE 1-Berkshire Hathaway to complete Maryland Cove Point LNG maintenance Friday
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Oct 27 (Reuters) - Berkshire Hathaway Energy on Thursday said it will complete annual maintenance at its Cove Point liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant in Maryland effective Friday.
Cove Point shut around Oct. 1, according to data from Refinitiv. Before the shutdown, the liquefaction plant was consuming about 0.76 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of natural gas.
The return of Cove Point and other U.S. LNG facilities in coming weeks will boost demand for gas in the United States, which has been low for weeks due in part to outages at Cove Point during October and Freeport LNG in Texas since June.
Cove Point and other U.S. LNG export plants usually shut in the spring and autumn when global demand for gas for heating or cooling is lower than during the peak winter and summer months.
Cove Point usually shuts for annual maintenance in the autumn. The plant last shut from Sept. 20-Oct. 11 in 2021, according to Refinitiv data.
Cove Point is designed to liquefy about 0.75 bcfd of gas into LNG.
One billion cubic feet is enough to supply about 5 million U.S. homes for a day.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc's Berkshire Hathaway Energy operates Cove Point and owns 25% of the facility. The rest is owned by units of Dominion Energy Inc (50%) and Brookfield Asset Management Inc (25%).
When Dominion operated the plant it sold the project's capacity for 20 years to a subsidiary of GAIL (India) Ltd and to ST Cove Point, which is a joint venture between units of Japanese trading company Sumitomo Corp and Tokyo Gas Co Ltd.
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Chris Reese and Daniel Wallis)
