LAGOS (AFX) - Nigeria NLNG said it had shipped the first cargo of liquefied natural gas to the US from its fourth production plant.

A company statement said the consignment from the plant, which only began production in November, was loaded Saturday at the Bonny terminal in southern Nigeria for delivery to the Lake Charles terminal in the US.

NLNG managing director Chris Haynes said production had also started at the firm's fifth plant, known as a train, which is the last leg of its 2.1 bln usd expansion program aimed at raising earnings from gas exports to four bln usd per annum.

He said output from the five trains would raise Nigeria's LNG output to 17 mln metric tons per annum.

Haynes said with the coming on stream in 2007 of a sixth plant, Nigeria will be able to export 14 mln tons of LNG per annum to Europe and eight mln tons to US markets.

NLNG, which is co-owned by the state-run oil operator NNPC, Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch/Shell, Italy's Agip and France's Totalfina Elf, started operations in October 1999 at Bonny Island.