U.S. gas shipping company Excelerate Energy has laid off six staff on its global liquefied natural gas (LNG) trading desk as part of a reorganisation, a spokeswoman at the company said on Friday.
Texas-based Excelerate said the commercial trading and chartering team was being downsized, but the company would continue to be active in those areas.
Founded by Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, Excelerate currently owns the world's largest fleet of floating LNG import terminals, with a total of nine floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs).
"Today we have reached a point where we are close to fully committing our fleet to long-term projects," the company said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
"We believe that our commercial trading and chartering activities are best structured to support and complement to our regasification business, and have reorganised the commercial trading and chartering team to better align with our overall business development strategy."
(Reporting by Sarah McFarlane and Oleg Vukmanovic; Editing by Susan Fenton)