What I Learned Today: LNG Processing Units -- Trains

This was the lede in an Oil and Gas Journal story today:

Norwegian producer Statoil ASA and its partners have cited lack of sufficient natural gas discoveries in the Snohvit license area in the Barents Sea as the main reason for the decision to halt any plans to expand the project. Statoil stated Oct. 2 that the partners will instead focus on optimizing and upgrading the existing single-train, 4.3 million tonne/year gas liquefaction facility on Melkoya off Hammerfest.

That article holds exactly "zero" interest for me. Nada. Zilch. None.

But I was curious based on the headline. Yesterday that first paragraph would have made less sense to me. Today, I get a bit more out of it.

This is what I would not have been able to understand yesterday: "focus on optimizing and upgrading the existing single-train, 4.3 million tonne/year gas liquefaction facility."

"Single-train"? Say, what?

But earlier today I linked a story on LNG posted at The Oil Drum. In that article, this paragraph:

Most LNG plants have on site more than one processing unit — called trains. The trains operate independent of each other, running in parallel to liquefy methane. Qatar hosts the world's largest trains — the biggest can handle about 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. Qatar's most massive plant, at the Ras Laffan complex, features two such trains plus four smaller ones that together can process about 5 bcf a day. That's about twice the volume as has been discussed for an LNG plant that could process Alaska North Slope gas. Alaska's Nikiski plant is relatively small, with capacity to handle about 200 million cubic feet a day.

So, today I learned that a liquefaction processing unit -- a train -- is different than the Bakken unit train.

Who wudda guessed?

I assume RNB Energy has mentioned this -- the liquefaction "train" -- in one of their highly educational articles but simply missed it.