The facility includes a marine terminal consisting of a maneuvering area and one protected marine berth for unloading LNG tankers. The dock is designed to handle vessels with capacity between 88,000 and 267,000 cubic meters.

The marine facilities have been designed to provide safe berthing for the receipt and mooring of LNG ships and to ensure safe transfer of LNG cargoes.

The facility features two LNG storage tanks, each with a capacity to hold 160,000 cubic meters (42.3 million gallons) of liquefied natural gas, maintaining its contents at a temperature of minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit. The tanks were built to withstand the vagaries of coastal storms, and can withstand a category five hurricane with wind gusts above 180 miles per hour. Each full-containment tank has a primary inner wall of 9% nickel steel and a secondary outer wall and roof of pre-stressed concrete that extends to the outside container. Around the outer perimeter where it encounters the weight of the tank walls, the foundation is five feet thick. A heating system was embedded in the foundation of each tank to guard against freezing the soil underneath and to preserve structural integrity of the foundations. There is a series of three submerged in-tank LNG send-out pumps that are used to move the LNG to the vaporization unit.

Freeport LNG utilizes a closed-loop recirculation system with an air tower (named the “VE Tower” in honor of Volker Eyermann (1939-2005), Freeport LNG’s Vice President of Engineering), enabling the terminal to take advantage of the high ambient temperature and high humidity conditions in the Texas Gulf Coast region. Historically, air towers have been used to reduce the heat of an industrial process system by exchanging the higher temperature of the process cooling system with the lower ambient temperature. However, the Freeport LNG air tower serves a heating function, providing vaporization heat during normal conditions. As a result of the use of the closed- loop system, for approximately nine months of the year, the air tower provides all of the heat required to regasify LNG. For the remainder of the year, the gas-fired indirect heaters act as a supplemental heat source for the vaporizers with the air tower providing varying amounts of the heat depending on local weather conditions.

Natural gas makes its way to customers from the Quintana terminal through a 9.6-mile pipeline built to a metering station near Stratton Ridge, Texas. At Stratton Ridge, the Freeport LNG pipeline connects to the Dow, and ConocoPhillips and Kinder Morgan pipeline systems that have multiple outlets for natural gas to flow to customers throughout the state of Texas and beyond.

The pipeline to Stratton Ridge is unique in several respects. It was the first 42-inch gas pipeline built in the state of Texas. The huge pipe has a wall nearly one inch thick and is rated to operating pressures up to 1440 pounds per square inch. This 42-inch line is capable of accommodating natural gas flows of up to a total of four billion cubic feet of gas a day. Four horizontal directional drills were required along the pipeline’s path to Stratton Ridge. The wetlands horizontal drill set a world record for pulling 42-inch pipe: 5100 feet, or nearly one mile.