VINCI, the French engineering and construction company, said one of its subsidiaries signed a contract to design and build Germany's first onshore liquefied natural gas import terminal at Brunsbüttel on the Elbe River south of Hamburg.
The company, based in the Paris suburbs, said the engineering, procurement and construction contract included building the facilities with two storage tanks.
VINCI said the work involved a strategic project for Germany's energy independence and would be carried out by its subsidiary Cobra IS in a consortium with the Spanish LNG terminal specialist Sener Energy Engineering.
“It will have a production capacity of 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year and will have two 165,000 cubic metres storage tanks,” explained VINCI.
“The terminal will be equipped with auxiliary operating systems, infrastructure and other buildings,” it added.
VINCI said the customer was German LNG Terminal GmbH and the terminal when completed would enable Germany to import LNG to be unloaded and injected into the grid system or transported by lorries for off-grid usage or for transportation fuel.
Target date
“The installation is to be delivered in 2026, with the works lasting 42 months,” said VINCI.
The statement added that Cobra IS and Sener had much experience in projects of this kind.
Their combined previous LNG contracts in Europe alone have included terminals at Sagunto in Eastern Spain and Bahía de Bizkaia in the Spanish northwest, as well as the Gate terminal in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Dunkirk LNG in France and the Zeebrugge facility in Belgium.
The German LNG Terminal company was accorded full planning permission in May 2022 by the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck.
Analysts said that due to its location and the industrial connections, the Brunsbüttel site has good prerequisites for developing into an import hub for the northern German economy in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The Brunsbüttel terminal has additionally signed a preliminary accord with Shell to acquire cargo volumes.
The German Government, though the state investment body Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), replaced Dutch storage company Royal Vopak in the shareholder line-up, though the dominant company is still the Dutch utility Gasunie.
The German utility RWE, based in Essen, has also signed an accord to join the Brunsbüttel project.
The development company has said it believed that LNG would become even “greener” in the future and would be a great transition fuel for Germany.
