LNG

Elengy, the operator of three terminals in Western and Southern France at Montoir-de-Bretagne, Fos Tonkin and Fos Cavaou has increased the LNG trucking capabilities at the Fos Cavaou facility located west of the Mediterranean port of Marseille.

The Managing Director of Elengy, Nelly Nicoli, inaugurated the two new tank-truck loading bays at the Fos Cavaou terminal.

The LNG fuel expansion event was also attended by René Raimondi, Mayor of the town of Fos, Hervé Martel, President of the Grand Port Maritime de Marseilles, and Régis Passerieux, Sub-Prefect of the district of Istres.

The new loading bays at Fos Cavaou now give the West Med terminal four bays with the capacity to offer 22,000 slots a year.

“LNG constitutes an immediate and effective response to the challenges of the energy transition in the road transport sector by reducing carbon-dioxide emissions,” stated Nicoli.

Commissioning

“With this commissioning, Elengy will continue with the development of its infrastructure to provide reliable and sustainable access to LNG for road transport,” added Nicoli.

“The two new bays of Fos Cavaou represented an investment of €10 million ($10.8M),” she stated.

Elengy has been expanding LNG truck-loading bays since 2013 at the Montoir-de-Bretagne and the Fos Tokin and Fos Cavaou terminals.

Over the past 10 years around 70,000 trucks have been loaded with LNG for the gradually expanding fuel market in the European Union.

Ship movements

Elengy’s three regulated terminals offer market flexibility for the unloading or loading of any type of LNG carriers as well as trans-shipment services.

The company’s LNG carrier traffic amounts to around 330 ships per annum at the three facilities.

Elengy added that during 2023 LNG had also been loaded into ISO containers at the Fos terminals for transportation by rail.

The company said it was also developing its services by investing in the development of bio-LNG made from waste to reduce the environmental footprint of the fuel.

Fluxys Belgium, the operator of gas infrastructure including the Zeebrugge LNG import terminal, has given the go-ahead for the construction of a new pipeline between Desteldonk and Opwijk in Belgium to improve west-to-east gas flows in the European Union.

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. 

Sept 26 (LNGJ)- Fluxys, the owner of the Belgian gas grid and holder of stakes in LNG terminals at Zeebrugge in Belgium and Dunkirk in France, said a new shareholder, Swiss-based Energy Infrastructure Partners (EIP), had acquired the 19.85 percent of shares in Fluxys previously held by a Canadian institutional investor, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ).

   “The equity transfer is expected to be completed by the end of 2022,” said Fluxys, without disclosing the value of the deal. Daniël Termont, President of Fluxys and representative of the main Fluxys shareholder, Publigas, said he was pleased with the transaction. “Together with CDPQ, Publigas has sailed a forward-looking course with Fluxys for more than 10 years and we have built up a highly valued partnership,” added Termont.

Sept 13 (LNG) - The 173,400 cubic metres capacity carrier “Maran Gas Chios” was scheduled to berth on September 13 at the French LNG import terminal at the Channel port of Dunkirk with a cargo from the Caribbean nation of Trinidad & Tobago, according to shipping data. The vessel lifted the cargo on September 2 from the Point Fortin facility in Trinidad.

   The cargo was arriving in France as the European benchmark Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) wholesale gas price was declining from more elevated levels to around the equivalent of $56.55 per million British thermal units. The spot day-ahead French PEG market price on the European Energy Exchange was at around the equivalent of $40.05 per MMBtu.

The French government outlined its plans to take full control of the utility EDF whose assets include gas-fired power and nuclear plants as well as LNG volumes and trading, mostly now handled by JERA Co. Inc. of Japan under a joint venture.

The main Continental European natural gas price and benchmark for LNG values, the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF), has risen to a 2021 record high on demand in Europe as industry prepares for a full relaunch after the Covid-19 economic slowdown.

French oil and gas major Total said it completed the first ship-to-containership liquefied natural gas bunkering operation in France’s waters at the Channel port of Dunkirk.

The liquefied natural gas import terminal at Dunkirk on the French Channel Coast has opened its truck-loading bay as small-scale LNG and fuel usage increases in Europe.

“Ship owners and haulage companies as well as remote industry increasingly choose LNG as alternative low emission fuel. Their supply can now be sourced from the Dunkirk LNG terminal,” said the French Dunkerque LNG operating company .

Following its commercial entry into service, the newly commissioned truck-loading bay at the Dunkirk terminal offers a loading capacity of 3,000 slots per year.

The Dunkirk import facility is owned and operated by Dunkerque LNG, a company 61 percent held by a consortium including Belgian gas infrastructure group Fluxys, as well as funds such as AXA Investment Managers on behalf of its clients and France’s Crédit Agricole Assurances.

A further 39 percent is owned by a consortium of South Korean investors led by IPM Group in cooperation with Samsung Asset Management.

Juan Vazquez, Chief Executive of Dunkerque LNG, said he was delighted with the start-up of services for the trucking industry.

“This project has successfully come to fruition through our collaboration with the Port of Dunkirk, one of our main partners in the development of this new service,” explained Vazquez.

“With a capacity of almost 2,000 loading slots available between now and the end of the year, our first bay is ready to welcome customers,” stated the CEO.

The company said the service was straightforward and trucking customers can book loading slots online 24/7.

“After online training, drivers can fully autonomously load LNG in just one hour and 30 minutes thanks to a flow rate of 50 cubic metres per hour,” said Dunkerque LNG.

“The increasing demand for cleaner energy in maritime and road transport as well as in the industrial sector has brought LNG to the forefront as an attractive alternative due to its low emission profile,” added the company.

The terminal is located alongside Dunkirk's Western Harbour and began importing cargoes in 2016.

The jetty is large enough to enable the unloading and reloading of the largest LNG carriers up to 266,000 cubic metres capacity and it has three tanks. each with 200,000 cubic metres of storage.

The Dunkirk liquefied natural gas import terminal on the Channel Coast of France said it accommodated 37 LNG carriers during the first five months of the year and in June also received a cargo from the newest US export plant, Cameron LNG in Louisiana.

“This intense level of activity is due to a complex combination of factors linked to the supply of and demand for LNG on global markets as well as the appeal of the Dunkirk LNG terminal in the market of northwest Europe,” said Pierre Dumont, volumes manager at the Dunkirk LNG company.

The 177,000 cubic metres capacity carrier “Marvel Crane” arrived with the US cargo on June 18 at the French terminal.

The Dunkirk facility was commissioned at the end of 2016 and is now owned and operated by a consortium comprising Fluxys of Belgium, operator of the Belgian Zeebrugge import terminal and insurance and banking groups from France and South Korea.

One of its advantages is that it offers easy access to European gas markets for new LNG cargo sources such as Russia and the US as well as traditional suppliers like Algeria, Qatar, Nigeria and Norway.

French energy major Total, a shareholder in the US Cameron plant, was one of the original shareholders in Dunkirk LNG with France’s main utility Engie, though both sold their Dunkirk stakes in 2018.

However, Total is still a supporter of the Dunkirk facility, which also receives Russian volumes from the Yamal plant in northern Siberia, where Total is also a stakeholder.

“The huge influx of LNG at our terminal is attributable, in part, to the supply of and demand for LNG on the global market,” said Dunkirk manager Dumont.

Supply is higher than expected due, in particular, to the production of LNG that was greater than initially foreseen at the Yamal LNG plant in Russia.

The Russians chose to channel these volumes towards the European market rather than Asia.

“However, the increase in supply occurs at a time when demand in Europe is stable and demand from Asia is rising more slowly than expected,” he added.

Dumont said that LNG producers have been forced to find the best possible outlets for their volumes while taking into account the market conditions.

“Under these market conditions, terminals in the northwest of Europe fulfil the market's expectations very well,” said Dumont.

“Dunkirk exceeds these expectations for at least two reasons,” he added.

“On the one hand, it offers access to both the French and Belgian markets and, on the other, it offers a competitive and environmental advantage thanks to the use of warm water from the Gravelines nuclear power plant to reheat the LNG and thereby turn it back into a gas (before it enters the transmission network), instead of using a more costly form of energy,” he explained.

“Our clients can therefore unload, store and regasify their LNG at our terminal under very favourable conditions,” stated Dumont.