Before dawn on June 8 last year, workers at the sprawling Freeport liquefied natural gas export plant on the Texas coast heard “strange” noises emanating from some of its pipes. They notified their bosses but a follow-up inspection found nothing amiss. Then came a fireball.
The explosion at Freeport LNG knocked out a centrepiece of the US gas export industry just as the world was looking for more fuel as the war in Ukraine squeezed…