LNG

Adriatic LNG, the import terminal offshore northeast Italy, reported a record year in terms of shipments and regasified volumes delivered into the Italian national grid.

The operating company, Terminale GNL Adriatico, is a gravity-based terminal that came on line in 2009 and 70-percent owned by ExxonMobil Corp.

The other minority shareholders include a subsidiary of QatarEnergy and the Italian grid operator and import terminals owner, SNAM.

“The regasification terminal located off the Veneto coast sent 8.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas into the national pipeline network, an increase of 7 percent from the previous year,,” said Adriatic LNG.

Steady cargo flow

A total of 75 LNG carriers called at the terminal last year, mainly from Qatar and the United States but also from other geographical areas, including, for the first time, Mozambique.

The volumes provided over 14 percent of natural gas consumption and confirmed itself as the third main entry source for Italian gas imports.

“The terminal therefore broke its previous best annual record, scored in 2022, when it sent 7.9 Bcm of gas into the national grid,” added the company.

Adriatic LNG noted that the results confirmed the increasing relevance of LNG in the Italian energy mix.

In 2023, total LNG imports to Italy amounted to 16.6 Bcm, a 16.8 percent increase compared with 2022.

The cargoes met 27 percent of the national natural gas needs of 61.5 Bcm.

Strategic infrastructure

For all of 2023 over 50 percent of Italian LNG imports were shipped through Adriatic LNG.

“Our terminal confirmed to be a strategic energy infrastructure for Italy and Europe,” said Alfredo Balena, Director of External Relations at Adriatic LNG.

“We can say that the 8.5 Bcm of natural gas injected by Adriatic LNG into the national grid represent an energy quantity equivalent to approximately 93 million megawatt-hours, equivalent to the total energy consumed the Veneto and Lombardy regions for a year,” stated Balena.

In total, from 2009 to 2023, 1,058 LNG carriers arrived at the regasification terminal for a total of 92 Bcm of gas sent into the national gas grid.

“The security of energy supplies in Europe and Italy is and will increasingly be based on LNG,,” Balena explained.

“The significant growth in LNG imports occurring over the last two years is linked to efforts being made to reduce dependence, and increase resilience, of the European gas system,” he concluded.

Enagás, the Spanish gas grid and terminals operator, is set to begin the second phase of the capacity allocation process, or open season, after interest expressed by 16 trading companies for Spain’s El Musel liquefied natural gas re-loading facility in northern Spain set aside for the European Union.

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.

Enagás, the Spanish gas grid and LNG terminals operator, has held an event for marketers and the regulatory authorities at its headquarters in Madrid where it revealed plans to launch an open season on March 6 for logistics services at the re-activated El Musel import terminal in Northwest Spain on the Bay of Biscay.

UK-based oil and gas majors BP plc and Shell plc have agreed to restructure their ownership in Trinidad and Tobago’s Atlantic liquefied natural gas project at Point Fortin in Trinidad.

Adriatic LNG, the operator of the largest LNG regasification terminal in Italy, said it had a positive conclusion to the 2021 open season and was preparing for next year’s process from May 2022.

The terminal, located 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) off the Veneto coastline, covered the allocation by tender of regasification capacity for a total amount of 2 billion standard cubic metres over a period of about three years.

“After a long and comprehensive public consultation process that began in early February 2021, the tender was conducted in a manner similar to those used by the aggressive competitors of LNG terminal operators in Europe with some notable improvements to benefit competition in the gas market,” said Adriatic LNG.

“Reliability, efficiency, and the fact that it is the only LNG regasification terminal in Italy capable of receiving almost all classes of LNG carriers, with a capacity ranging from 65,000 cubic metres up to 217,000 cubic metres capacity, make Adriatic LNG's service particularly attractive to national and international operators, improving competition in the Italian gas market,” it added.

Auctions

Adriatic LNG’s open season culminated in a series of non-binding and binding auctions between interested operators between November 26th and into December 2021.

The terminal has been on line since autumn 2009 and is a private operator which enables cargo imports amounting to about 10 percent of the national gas consumption of Italy.

Adriatic LNG is co-controlled by ExxonMobil Italiana Gas and Qatar Terminal Ltd, a subsidiary of QatarEnergy, while Italian gas network operator SNAM has a 7.3 percent shareholding.

It has so far handled more than 800 cargoes at its gravity-based structure facilities.

The terminal includes two LNG storage tanks, each with a capacity of 125,000 cubic metres.

“In this regard, it should be noted that the project to increase the regasification capacity of the Adriatic LNG terminal from 8 to 9 billion cubic metres a year has been approved by the Ministry of Ecological Transition and the authorisation is now in the finalisation phase,” explained Adriatic LNG.

“The increase in regasification capacity at the Adriatic terminal will be achieved through the optimisation of the operating conditions of the infrastructure, without any structural changes to the current configuration,” added the company.

In the open season, Adriatic LNG said it offered flexibility and gave the opportunity to operators to submit, for certain types of products and within specific limits, personalized bids by requesting the reduction of duration and/or annual volumes.

Adriatic LNG noted that in a gas market in constant evolution and increasingly ready to offer price opportunities and delivery flexibility, the company invites interested operators to consult its website for the short-term regasification service offer and to participate in the open season 2022 that will start at the end of May 2022.

The eight supplying countries so far to the Adriatic facility have been Qatar, Angola, Egypt, Trinidad and Tobago, Equatorial Guinea, Norway, Nigeria and the US.