LNG

Höegh LNG Holdings, the owner of 10 floating storage and regasification units and two conventional LNG carrier, has completed the acquisition of the LNG carrier “Golar Seal”.

The company purchased the 2013-built “Golar Seal” from Cool Co., the LNG shipping joint venture led by Eastern Pacific Shipping.

Höegh LNG paid $184.3M for the vessel with 160,000 cubic metres of capacity.

Hamilton, Bermuda-based, Höegh also assumed all costs associated with the vessel's scheduled dry-docking.

Höegh said that the “Golar Seal” would also be renamed the “Höegh Gandria”.

Höegh last month reported net losses for the fourth quarter and the year during a busy period as three vessels were prepared for floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) operations in Germany and Brazil.

Höegh still posted increased revenues during the last three months of 2022 amounting to $106.06M, up from $94.66M in the same quarter of 2021. Full-year revenues rose to $380.8M from $351.8M in 2021.

FSRU market

The company increased vessel operating expenses primarily related to repositioning of three vessels to make them ready for FSRU operations.

All three vessels completed their FSRU operational preparations at shipyards during the fourth quarter and two 10-year time charter contracts with the German Federal Government were signed in December and January respectively.

The company’s FSRUs “Höegh Esperanza” and “Höegh Gannet” were allocated to contracts and deployed in Germany at the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven and at Brunsbüttel on the Elbe River north of Hamburg.

The third vessel, “Höegh Giant”, left the yard in November and was operating in the LNG carrier market on an interim charter before it was scheduled to go to Brazil in the second quarter of 2023.

Höegh signed a 10-year charter agreement with a Brazilian joint venture comprising São Paulo Regas Company and Comgás, Brazil’s largest gas distributor.

Höegh added in its earnings statement that its business development team was in “active dialogue” with several potential new projects looking for FSRU capacity which could provide growth opportunities for the group in the future.

Petróleo Brasileiro, which was the first national oil company to import LNG to chartered floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs) back in 2009 while never developing LNG production itself, reported a 76 percent surge in oil-led net profits as the government also brought in a new tax on energy companies exporting oil.

French utility Engie, the parent company of France's network operator and LNG terminals owner, said its US$8.6 billion joint bid with a Canadian fund won the competitive tender conducted by Brazilian energy company Petrobras for the sale of the South American nation’s largest gas transmission network.

Golar LNG said its power venture subsidiary set up with Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners closed a financial agreement for a project in northeast Brazil involving a power plant and a liquefied natural gas import facility.

The two Golar LNG shipping companies see intense competition for fixtures in the charter market while there is growing interest in the import sector for floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs) for small-scale and medium-scale projects.

May 25 (LNGJ) - The 155,000 cubic metres capacity “British Ruby”, operated by BP Shipping, is unloading a Qatargas cargo on May 25 at the Bahia Blanca import facility in Argentina in the form of the FSRU “Exemplar”, according to shipping data. The 145,700 cubic metres capacity “LNG Benue” is unloading a shipment on May 26 at the Brazilian Guanabara Bay FSRU, near Rio de Janeiro. The 266,000 cubic metres capacity Q-Max vessel “Al Bahiya” is scheduled to unload a cargo on May 30 at the Rotterdam Gate import terminal from Ras Laffan in Qatar.

Brazilian state-run energy company Petrobras has launched an international bidding process for the sale of its two liquefied natural gas import terminals, which have already received LNG cargoes from the new export plant at Sabine Pass in Louisiana.