Berkshire Hathaway will complete Maryland Cove Point LNG maintenance on Friday

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Berkshire Hathaway Energy said Thursday it will complete annual maintenance at its Cove Point, Maryland liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant beginning Friday.

Cove Point closed around October 1, according to Refinitiv data. Prior to the shutdown, the liquefaction plant consumed approximately 0.76 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of natural gas.

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The return of Cove Point and other US LNG facilities in the coming weeks will boost US gas demand, which has been weak for weeks in part due to outages at Cove Point in October and Freeport LNG in Texas since June.

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Cove Point and other U.S. LNG export plants typically shut down in the spring and fall when global gas demand for heating or cooling is lower than during peak winter months and of summer.

Cove Point generally closes for annual maintenance in the fall. The factory closed for the last time from September 20 to October 20. 11 in 2021, according to data from Refinitiv.

Cove Point is designed to liquefy approximately 0.75 bcfd of gas into LNG.

One billion cubic feet is enough to power about 5 million American homes for a day.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy of Berkshire Hathaway Inc operates Cove Point and owns 25% of the facility. The remainder is owned by shares of Dominion Energy Inc (50%) and Brookfield Asset Management Inc (25%).

When Dominion operated the plant, it sold the project capacity for 20 years to a subsidiary of GAIL (India) Ltd and 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)