Federal regulators have given the green light to place into service the first module and associated equipment at Kinder Morgan's Elba Island liquefied natural gas export plant in the US state of Georgia.

In a letter dated Tuesday, staff from the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the testing phase had shown that the facility had "been constructed in accordance with Commission approval and applicable standards and can be expected to operate safely as designed."

The approval comes one day after the Elba Island LNG developers asked for permission to start commercial service at the first module.

The milestone at Elba comes after a range of delays on the project. The first liquefaction unit for the 2.5 million-tonnes-per-annum project had been expected to be in commercial service in late April. The other nine modules were scheduled to come online sequentially, with one planned to start up each month.

With the approval, Elba Island LNG may be the fifth LNG export facility to come online in the Lower 48 states in the US and would be the second on the East Coast. The request comes as US LNG production is ramping up rapidly and the nation looks set to be one of the top three LNG exporters by the end of the year.

Cheniere's Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi terminals, along with the Sempra-led Cameron LNG, lie on the Gulf Coast. Dominion's Cove Point project, in the state of Maryland, was the first on the east coast to come online.

The first train at the privately owned Freeport LNG facility in Texas is in the commissioning phase and is also expected to be in service soon.

But that schedule was delayed because of problems during the commissioning process, postponing the in-service date further. That came after the project had already been previously pushed back by a total of about six months because of construction delays and problems assembling the facility's liquefaction modules.

Kinder Morgan owns a 51% interest in the facility, with funds managed by EIG Global Energy Partners holding the remaining 49%. The terminal will source feedstock from Kinder Morgan's Elba Express pipeline. The pipeline provides connectivity to the Williams-operated Transco pipeline as well as Kinder Morgan's Southern Natural Gas pipeline.

Shell owns a 100% capacity stake in the project.