Safety. Discipline. Commitment. Resilience. Those words best describe 2024 for Freeport LNG. We marked several notable achievements and milestones last year and that success would not have been possible without the hard work, dedication and contributions of our workforce.
Starting with safety, our top priority. Our teams worked just over 2 million man-hours in 2024, with a Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) for the year of 0.095. That TRIR is significantly better than the industry average of 0.29, an achievement for which we are very proud. However, we know that we cannot relax our continuous commitment to protecting ourselves, our colleagues, our facilities, and our community in all that we do. We are always striving to do more as it relates to safety, and we continue to bolster our safety culture through several key initiatives, which are detailed in the Health and Safety section of this report.
From an operations standpoint, Freeport LNG overcame unforeseen events in 2024 that were outside of our control – namely, defects identified in all nine of our refrigerant compressor motors across our three liquefaction trains and a direct hit from Hurricane Beryl. Even with the significant recovery efforts needed to address these two major events, we were able to progress key initiatives including:
- Completion of our facility debottlenecking project, resulting in multiple daily LNG production rates in excess of debottlenecking projections
- Completion of Hot Air Recirculation (HAR) mitigation, which will minimize the amount of hot air recirculation at our liquefaction facility that impedes LNG production rates during summer months
- Progressed plans for replacement fan blades of the Air-Cooled Heat Exchangers at our pre-treatment and liquefaction facilities – upgrades to 48 fans at our pre-treatment facility and 458 fans at our liquefaction facility will provide improved cooling efficiency, which is anticipated to yield higher LNG production and hurricane resiliency
- Completion of improvements to voltage fluctuation ride-through capability when our liquefaction facilities are affected by power grid voltage disturbances; completion of this work has already increased the overall operational reliability of our liquefaction facilities
Thanks to the diligence of our teams in implementing these projects and other operational initiatives, Freeport LNG was able to close 2024 performing at our highest availability, reliability and LNG production levels to date.
As it relates to organizational hierarchy, we implemented key leadership changes across the company in 2024, including that of President, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, Chief Operating Officer, Safety, Security and Engineering. We embarked on a path to strengthen our organization with expertise in all areas of our business that are core to Freeport LNG’s sustained success. These organizational changes are intended to build organizational muscle and drive improvement in all aspects of our business through enhanced transparency, accountability, efficiency and reliability. I am confident that these significant leadership changes to our organization and business processes in 2024 will deliver sustained success for Freeport LNG in the years ahead.
When it comes to the broader LNG market, with growing global demand for energy in emerging economies and from continued growth in AI and related data center energy consumption around the world, clean, affordable and reliable LNG remains the answer. As more and more countries are looking for additional energy resources to meet growing demand, and cleaner energy alternatives beyond coal, that is only going to continue to drive the demand and need for more U.S. LNG.
With our all electric-drive facility, which dramatically reduces emissions relative to gas turbine fired facilities, Freeport LNG continues to be well-positioned to provide our customers with the cleanest LNG in the industry.
The growth of the U.S. LNG industry has been nothing short of extraordinary. The sheer magnitude of both the domestic economic benefit and the U.S. geopolitical influence provided by the U.S. LNG industry’s entry into the global marketplace in an incredibly short period of time is unprecedented.
Specific to Freeport LNG’s positive economic impacts, through a third party local economic impact study, it is estimated that Freeport LNG’s activities contributed almost $640 million, directly and indirectly, to the Brazoria County economy in 2024 alone and supported almost 1,100 jobs in the county, while providing $26.5 million in revenues for local taxing jurisdictions in 2024.
We value the communities in which we operate and remain committed to being not only a good neighbor, but a valued contributor to the local economy as well. More detail about our annual community, philanthropic and stakeholder support is noted in the Community section of this report.
The era of U.S. energy dominance is here, and we look forward to bolstering our current market position as a leading LNG exporter to our global allies. In 2025 and beyond, Freeport LNG remains committed to delivering strengthened process safety management, improved long-term financial health, and continuous improvement efforts across our organization.
Michael Smith, Founder, Chairman and CEO