Sept 10 (Reuters) - The amount of natural gas flowing to

the Cameron LNG export plant in Louisiana dropped on Tuesday,

just one day before Tropical Storm Francine was expected to hit

the Louisiana coast near Cameron as a hurricane, data from

financial firm LSEG showed.

Officials at Cameron LNG were not immediately available for

comment on the reason for the reduction.

LSEG said the amount of pipeline gas flowing to Cameron fell

to 1.3 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on Tuesday from about

2.2 bcfd on Monday. That compares with an average of 2.1 bcfd

over the past week.

One billion cubic feet of gas is enough to supply about five

million homes for a day.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) projected Francine

will strengthen into a hurricane on Tuesday before hitting the

Louisiana coast on Wednesday. Louisiana is home to three of the

nation's seven big LNG export plants, including Cameron.

Cameron LNG's partners include units of U.S. energy company

Sempra Energy, Japanese corporate groups Mitsui & Co ( MITSF )

and Mitsubishi ( MSBHF ), France's TotalEnergies

and Japanese shipping line Nippon Yusen KK ( NYUKF ) (NYK Line)

, according to the Cameron website.

With over 75% of U.S. gas production coming from big inland

shale basins like Appalachia in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and

Ohio and the Permian in West Texas and eastern New Mexico,

analysts said hurricanes were more likely to reduce gas prices

by cutting demand through power outages and knocking LNG export

plants out of service.

That is different from 20 years ago when 20% of the nation's

gas came from the federal offshore Gulf of Mexico. Back then,

Gulf Coast hurricanes usually caused gas prices to spike, but

now that offshore region produces only about 2% of the country's

gas.

In addition to the 2.0-bcfd Cameron, the other big LNG

export plants operating in Louisiana are Cheniere Energy's

4.5-bcfd Sabine Pass and Venture Global LNG's 1.6-bcfd

Calcasieu Pass.

So far on Tuesday, Sabine was on track to pull in about 4.6

bcfd of feedgas, about the same as on Monday, and Calcasieu was

on track to pull in about 1.4 bcfd of feedgas, also around the

same as on Monday, according to LSEG data.

LNG plants pull in more gas than they can turn into LNG

because they use some of that gas to fuel equipment.

Officials at Cheniere and Venture Global were not

immediately available for comment.

In addition to Calcasieu Pass, Venture Global was also in

the process of testing parts of its new 2.6-bcfd Plaquemines LNG

export plant in Louisiana.

Analysts have said they expect Plaquemines to produce its

first LNG and export its first cargo in test mode later this

year.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; editing by Jason Neely and Emelia

Sithole-Matarise)