Yokogawa accelerating growth of natural gas in the global energy mix

As the demand for North American liquified natural gas (LNG) continues to grow both domestically and in other regions, Yokogawa has leveraged its deep technical experience from major projects around the world to secure wins for three key greenfield LNG projects in the US in the first half of 2019.

Global demand for LNG is rising year on year, particularly driven by Asian countries. Both existing and new suppliers have been investing in new capacity to satisfy this growing demand. In 2019, LNG greenfield investment is forecast to reach almost US$ 103 billion ; the biggest investment year to date for the fast-growing LNG industry. In 2018, North America became the fourth largest LNG exporter with 21.1 MT and 6.7% global market share. By the mid-2020s, it is expected that the United States will become the world's largest LNG exporter.

Since its first LNG project in 1969, Yokogawa Electric Corporation (Yokogawa) has had its automation and digitalization solutions selected for implementation on 90 liquefaction trains, almost 80 LNG carrier vessels and 50 re-gasification terminals worldwide. This depth of experience in LNG has enabled the company to successfully co-innovate and deliver highly modularized and inter-operable solutions using agile methodologies. These range from sensing, measurement and integrated safety and control to strategy, operations and supply chain optimization. These road-tested solutions are now in demand by a new generation of North American producers and suppliers, and in the first six months of 2019, the company was successfully selected for three LNG projects, ranging in size from 2.5 metric tonnes per annum (MTPA) to 14 MTPA, through its regional headquarters, Yokogawa Corporation of America in Houston.

Yokogawa's solutions and project execution approaches have opened up major opportunities for project developers to "right-size" plant designs, compress the engineering lifecycle and de-risk plant commissioning and start-up. The company's ability to design-in deep OT/IT integration enables incremental productivity gains during the project's operational phase. Benefits of this include enhanced capital efficiency and accelerated time to project sanctioning or Final Investment Decision (FID). Once operational, the value of incremental plant production generally dwarfs other margin optimization considerations. Yokogawa's solutions for integrated process and utility system optimization and asset care and maintenance ensure operating profits are maximized.

"The award of automation and digitalization solutions to Yokogawa on these three projects is testament to the value that Yokogawa offers to the LNG industry, particularly for small to mid-scale LNG," stated Shuji Mori, Chief Executive Officer for Yokogawa Corporation of America. "These awards complement the work that Yokogawa has executed on other major LNG projects around the world such as Chevron Wheatstone, Yamal LNG, PT Badak, Oman LNG, Sakhalin Energy, Sabine Pass LNG and PFLNG2."

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