LNG

Enagás, the Spanish natural gas operator of six large LNG terminals and with gas assets in other European countries, has successfully sold €600 million of bonds as it also allocated half of its available regasification capacity for the next 15 years.

The Enagás 10-year bonds will mature in 2034 and have an annual coupon of 3.625 percent.

The bonds had five-times more offers to buy than the issuance required.

“Although the company does not have relevant maturities until the end of the year, it has taken advantage of the good market conditions at the beginning of the year to carry out this issue, extend the average life of its debt and thus have part of the upcoming maturities covered,” the Madrid-based company explained.

“The success of the placement, both in term and in financing cost, contributes to improving the good financial situation of the company, which has diversified financing sources,” it added.

Slot allocations

Spain’s Enagas said that its recent LNG allocation represented nearly all of the slots it had offered to date, reinforcing Spain’s status as key hub for LNG imports in Europe.

The prominence of the Spanish in the LNG sector is further highlighted by the fact that its regasification terminals accounted for almost one-third of LNG storage in Europe as of mid-January 2024.

Enagás also started up the El Musel LNG trans-shipment terminal in 2023 in the Port of Gijón in northwest Spain to supply other EU nations and assigned its logistics services to the European utility Endesa.

The grid company owns five large Spanish terminals at Barcelona in the northeast, at Cartagena in the southeast, at Sagunto in the east of Spain, at Huelva in the southwest and the El Musel facility.

Enagás additionally holds a 50 percent stake at another northwest facility serving the northwest port of Bilbao and owns two small regasification terminals in the Canary Islands.

Spain’s storage levels are still at around 85 percent filled and the LNG is supplemented by pipeline gas supplies from Algeria.

Other stakes

Enagás in July 2023 closed an agreement to acquire an additional 4 percent stake in the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), taking its stake in the pipeline bringing Azerbaijan gas to Europe up to 20 percent.

In other LNG activities outside of Spain, Enagás became an industrial partner with a 10 percent stake in the Hanseatic Energy Hub consortium planning an onshore LNG import terminal at the German North Sea port of Stade.

Enagás, the Spanish gas grid and terminals operator, said the El Musel liquefied natural gas re-loading facility in Northwest Spain designated to supply the European Union has awarded the services contracts to utility Endesa after a tender process.

Endesa is the largest Spanish electric utility while being a majority-owned subsidiary of the Italian utility group Enel.

Enagás said the award to Endesa of logistics services for the El Musel terminal at the Port of Gijón on the Bay of Biscay followed a capacity allocation process.

“The open season had aroused strong interest among trading companies. In total, 13 were received between June 5 and 30, the period during which this last part of the process was developed,” explained Enagás.

“The logistics services offered for this infrastructure are LNG unloading, storage and loading operations,” Enagás said.

Regulated régime

“Within the regulated access regime, the El Musel plant contemplates a minimum regasification for the exact management of the terminal, as well as the tanker-loading service,” it added.

Enagás has re-activated the existing El Musel terminal to meet growing LNG needs in the EU after the closure of Russian pipeline gas supplies and a US commissioning cargo was delivered recently by the 174,000 cubic metres capacity carrier “Cool Racer”.

The Spanish terminal will contribute up to 8 billion cubic metres of additional LNG to Europe’s supply when commercial operations start.

El Musel will specialise in the unloading of LNG carriers from various producing countries and the rapid re-loading of ships for different European destinations.

The terminal berthing can accommodate the largest vessels and it has two storage tanks each with capacity of 150,000 cubic metres.

The re-opening of El Musel is part of the Spanish Government’s “More Energy Security Plan” and will add to Spain’s role as an energy hub for Europe as the nation also receives pipeline gas imports from Algeria.

Enagás operates six other LNG regasification terminals on mainland Spain.

The South American nation of Colombia is making moves to import more liquefied national gas at the floating LNG terminal at the port of Cartagena to supply the country's main thermal plants to deal with the El Niño weather phenomenon.

Enagás, the Spanish natural gas grid and LNG terminals operator, said first-quarter net profits excluding one-time items dropped by 21 percent and revenues also fell even as LNG and pipeline gas delivers rose and 43 percent of the LNG stored in Europe during the quarter was in the tanks of the six Spanish regasification terminals.

Spain’s foreign trade report covering the first two months of 2023 said that natural gas exports from Spain, including LNG and pipeline natural gas, amounted to €628.8 million ($690M) in total to nations like France, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Morocco.

The data showed that this was 194.3 percent higher than the €213.6M of gas exports in the same January and February period of 2022 and before the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on energy markets.

Analysts note that Spain’s natural gas imports by pipeline from Algeria and by LNG carriers in its countrywide network have traditionally resulted in a big deficit in the trade balance for gas.

However, the latest Spanish trade report shows the gas deficit bill for January and February was reduced by €500M.

“The accumulated deficit in the first two months of 2023 stood at €2.54 billion compared with the €3.04Bln it reached in the same period last year,” said the report.

In the first months of 2023, the report showed that almost all of Spanish traded LNG went to Italy and cost €299M and next was Germany with €132.73M of deliveries, Portugal with €32.1M and the Netherlands €23.3M.

Spanish statistics also show that in the first two months of 2023 a total of 12,402.9 gigawatts hours were exported, of which 60.79 percent was transported through gas pipelines and 39. 21 percent in ships as LNG.

By quantity of gas purchased, France leads in this case the list of countries that have purchased the most gas from Spain.

Interconnections

The French imported 4,526.2 GW/h of gas in January and February, followed by Italy (3,284 GW/h), Portugal (1,897.3 GW/h) and Morocco (1,216 GW/h).

Specifically, pipeline gas exports through the interconnections with France broke records in the first two months to exceed 35 terawatt hours (TWh), the equivalent of 3.88 billion cubic metres of natural gas.

In total, through the interconnections with France and Portugal, Spanish exports reached 41 TWh, the highest figure since 2016.

Spain has six LNG import terminals operating and is currently re-launching a seventh previously moth-balled facility. The El Musel terminal in the Port of Gijón is capable of contributing up to 8 Bcm of additional LNG to the European Union’s supply through trans-shipments.

Spanish grid operator Enagás has capacity at six LNG regasification terminals in Spain.

It owns five terminals at Barcelona in the northeast, at Cartagena in the southeast, at Sagunto in the east of Spain, at Huelva in the southwest and the El Musel terminal in the northwest.

Overall in the whole EU, there were also 13.7 Bcm of pipeline natural gas imports in the month of March alone, which was 14 percent higher than the previous month of February, though 39 percent down on March 2022.

So far in 2023, the EU’s cumulative pipeline gas supply for the first three months decreased by 37 percent year-on-year to 38.3 Bcm, driven by falls in imports mostly from Russia, but also due to lower volumes being received from Norway and Algeria, while imports from Azerbaijan on the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline have risen.

Enagás, the Spanish natural gas grid and LNG terminals operator. posted a 15 percent increase in net profits and said the network of six LNG terminals had saved the country money and confirmed the opening in early 2023 of a seventh and existing LNG export terminal dedicated to European Union supplies.

Leading European Union LNG import terminal owner and grid operator, Enagás of Spain, has signed a firm agreement in Albania to help the Balkan nation’s natural gas company AlbGaz develop its markets and infrastructure.

April 5 (LNGJ) - The 148,450 cubic metres capacity carrier “LNG Imo” was scheduled to deliver a cargo on April 5 to the Sines import terminal in Portugal from the Bonny Island plant in Nigeria. Another Nigerian cargo is headed for Europe onboard the 142,990 cubic metres capacity vessel “LNG Enugu”. The carrier is scheduled to arrive on April 10 at the Cartagena terminal in southeast Spain. The Cartagena facility is also expecting a shipment on the 180,000 cubic metres capacity vessel, the “Adriano Knutsen”, in the days ahead. That cargo was lifted from the Corpus Christi LNG plant in Texas.

Promigas, the utility company in the South American nation of Colombia, said it was studying a boost in regasification capacity at its Cartagena floating LNG import terminal on the Caribbean Coast to meet increasing demand.

July 27 (LNGJ) - Enagás, the Spanish gas grid and LNG terminals operator as well as a shareholder in the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), posted first-half net profits of €213.1 million ($251.2M), with greater contributions from subsidiaries while total demand for natural gas in Spain increased by 6.3 percent in the first six months of 2021.

   The company said that the contribution to earnings from the US Tallgrass Energy pipelines unit and the TAP represented 40.4 percent of the total. Enagás said that since being commissioned at the end of 2020, the TAP pipeline that links Turkey with Italy through Greece and Albania had delivered 3 billion cubic metres of gas to customers through the end of June 2021.