LNG

Excelerate Energy, the leading US provider of floating LNG import terminals, said its floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU), the “Exemplar”, arrived at the port of Inkoo, in Finland to become a Baltic regional supplier of natural gas.

The FSRU was previously loaded with a partial cargo of LNG which would serve as the initial commissioning cargo for the terminal.

The FSRU “Exemplar” has been chartered to Gasgrid Finland Oy for a period of 10 years.

“It will provide flexible, reliable, and secure delivery of regasified LNG to Finland and other Baltic countries,” said Excelerate.

Inkoo port is located on the Southern Coast of Finland and provides an optimal deepwater port at close proximity to the pipelines distributing the gas mainly to industrial end-users in the Baltic region.

The developer had made the move to enable independence from Russian pipeline natural gas.

The FSRU capacity alone is sufficient for the gas needs of both Finland and Estonia. Russian gas supplies through the Imatra entry point into Finland have been stopped since May 2022.

Finland already has two onshore LNG terminals at Pori and Tornio. They have been in operation since 2016 and 2018 respectively.

Infrastructure

“The arrival of the FSRU ‘Exemplar’ at the port of Inkoo represents an important milestone for Finland as it prepares to enhance its energy security and bring essential energy infrastructure to the region,” said Steven Kobos, President and Chief Executive of Excelerate.

“This is a tremendous accomplishment for everyone involved, and we are proud to have partnered with Gasgrid on this opportunity,” added Kobos.

In addition to providing regasification services under the time charter with Gasgrid, Excelerate said that through its recently formed Finnish gas marketing subsidiary, Excelerate Finland Gas Marketing, the US firm has executed an agreement for the sale of commissioning volumes and regasification capacity rights during the commissioning phase.

“Through this agreement, Excelerate Finland will be able to provide natural gas to downstream customers in Finland and other Baltic countries,” explained the Houston-based company.

Excelerate explained that the FSRU “Exemplar” departed drydock in Spain on December 6 where it underwent customer-requested winterization upgrades.

“The vessel subsequently procured its cargo from Excelerate’s global LNG portfolio via a ship-to-ship transfer with the FSRU ‘Excelsior’ near Gibraltar,” said the company.

“The ‘Excelsior’ recently completed its 10-year service in Israel and will go on charter to the Federal Republic of Germany in 2023,” it added.

The FSRU “Exemplar” is 291 metres long and 43 meters wide. It has a storage capacity of 150,900 cubic metres of LNG and can provide more than 5 billion cubic metres per annum of regasification capacity.

The European Union’s Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson is in Algeria for two days of talks on strengthening the EU’s energy cooperation with the Algerians after the failure of an EU summit last week to agree a natural gas price cap that would have affected LNG trading.

Eni, the Italian energy major and significant liquefied natural gas developer and market participant, said it agreed to acquire natural gas fields in Algeria from UK major BP because of the “great strategic value” they now held.

July 26 (LNGJ) - Vår Energi ASA, a player in the Norwegian oil and natural gas sector and majority-owned by Italian major Eni, reported cash flow from operations in the second quarter of $1.53 billion versus $1.31Bln in the prior-year quarter. The company operates four fields on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, located in the Barents Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the North Sea. In addition to the operated fields, Vår Energi currently holds ownership interests in 32 partner-operated fields.

   “The continued strong cash flow generation reflects another quarter of safe and efficient operations with high commodity prices and stable production and supply of gas to our customers in Europe,” said Chief Executive of Vår Energi Torger Rød. “This supports our commitment to deliver on our strategy and a $1Bln minimum dividend expectation for 2022,” added the CEO. “Second-quarter production was impacted by seasonally high maintenance and turnaround activity across our own and partner-operated licences,” he added.

Equinor, the Norwegian oil and gas company whose Hammerfest LNG plant is scheduled to resume production in mid-May, has made a new natural gas and oil discovery in the North Sea.

State-owned Equinor is the operator of production licence 293 B close to the Troll and Fram area where the find was made.

“Based on preliminary estimates the size of the discovery is between 4 and 8 million standard cubic metres of recoverable oil equivalent, or 25-50 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent,” said the company.

Temporarily called Kveikje, this is the sixth discovery in this area since the third quarter of 2019.

“Up to more than 300 million barrels of oil equivalent were proven in the five former discoveries,” said Equinor.

The discovery comes as the Hammerfest LNG plant is scheduled to come back on stream following repairs from a fire in September 2020 and will provide more than 6 billion cubic metres of gas per year from the Barents Sea to European customers.

“We are very pleased to make another discovery in this area that we regard to be commercial,” said Lill H. Brusdal, Equinor’s vice president for the Troll area’s exploration and production.

Tie-in

“As we did with the other discoveries in this area, we will consider tying this discovery to the Troll B or C platform,” added Brusdal.

“By utilising the existing infrastructure, we will be able to recover these volumes at a low cost and with low emissions,” she stated.

“There were several drilling targets in the exploration well. After Kveikje was discovered, drilling continued to the next target in the upper part of the Cretaceous stratigraphic sequence,” said Equinor.

The well was drilled by “Deepsea Stavanger” and the latest plans are for Equinor to drill another exploration well in this area this year.

The licence owners are Equinor (51 percent), Norwegian firm DNO AS (29 percent), Japan’s Idemitsu (10 percent) and London-listed Longboat Energy (10 percent).

Equinor’s exploration strategy is to explore for volumes in mature areas, where discoveries can be tied into existing infrastructure to maximise the value of investments.

“We will drill between 20 and 30 exploration wells each year moving forward,” said the company.

“Around 80 percent of the exploration wells will be drilled in familiar areas near existing infrastructure, but certain new areas and ideas will be tested.,” said the Stavanger-based company. 

Norwegian energy and LNG producer Equinor has signed four new contracts with oil and gas services company Aibel, also based in Norway, on behalf of the licence-holders in three offshore fields in the Norwegian Continental Shelf, with two of them having large natural gas and condensate resources.

Burckhardt Compression, the Swiss manufacturer of compressor systems and a service provider for LNG and other markets, is making use of its wholly-owned Chinese company, Shenyang Yuanda Compressor, to supply an energy project in Switzerland.

The Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline project, which will bring Russian gas to northern Germany and the European Union in competition to LNG and backed by leading Europe-based energy companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, has formally resumed pipe-laying in German waters after being given a sanctions waiver by the current US Administration.

Gazprom, the Russian natural gas company, said it made a yet another new gas discovery on the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia, close to the largest Russian LNG export plant run by rival operator Novatek.

Gazprom explained that the discovery was made as a result of drilling and testing of an exploratory well on Yamal and a commercial gas inflow was obtained with a flow rate of about 600,000 cubic metres per day.

“This proves that the new deposit contains substantial amounts of gas. Therefore, the field's commercial value is now much higher than before,” said the Russian company.

Novatek’s Yamal plant has three liquefaction Trains on stream, each with nameplate capacity of 5.5 million tonnes per annum.

A smaller fourth Train at Yamal is currently being completed and will produce 900,000 tonnes per annum, taking overall production to 17.4 MTPA.

Gazprom said that its latest discovery for future pipeline gas sales marked the fourth major discovery it had made on the shelf of the Yamal Peninsula in the Kara Sea over the last two years.

The company will calculate the newly-discovered reserves of the Leningradskoye field and present the findings to the State Reserves Commission in order to record them in the state register.

The Leningradskoye gas and condensate field is located in the Kara Sea within the Leningradsky licensed block .

The field's current recoverable gas reserves are estimated to total 1.9 trillion cubic metres and are classified as unique in size.

In 2019, Gazprom discovered the Dinkov and Nyarmeyskoye fields, also on the shelf of the Yamal Peninsula.

Then in 2020, the company discovered the “75 Years of Victory” field on the Yamal shelf.

The Dinkov field is situated within the Rusanovsky licensed block.

The field is unique in terms of gas reserves. Its recoverable reserves in the С1+С2 categories amount to 390.7 billion cubic metres.

The Nyarmeyskoye field is located within the Nyarmeysky licensed block.

In terms of gas reserves, it is a large field with the recoverable amount of 120.8 billion cubic metres in the С1+С2 categories.

The “75 Years of Victory” field is situated within the Skuratovskaya prospect.

From the point of view of gas reserves, the field is classified as large: its recoverable gas reserves in the С1+С2 categories total 202.4 billion cubic metres.

Gazprom also has a subsurface use license for the Rusanovskoye field on the Yamal shelf.

The number of gas field in the area amount to 32 discoveries.

Total reserves and resources of all fields in the Yamal Peninsula amount to over 26.5 trillion cubic metres of gas, 1.6 billion tons of gas condensate and 300 million tons of oil.

Gazprom’s pipeline natural gas production in Yamal in 2019 came to 96.3 billion cubic metres. The future prospects for Yamal pipeline gas output is up to 360 billion cubic metres of gas per year.

Gazprom said that overcoming Yamal’s harsh climate and environment, has made the shelf the launch pad for efficient, safe and innovative technologies and technical solutions.

“The Yamal mega-project is unparalleled in terms of complexity, as its hydrocarbon reserves are concentrated in a hard-to-reach area with exceedingly difficult climatic conditions,” explained Gazprom.

The region is characterized by permafrost, long winters, and low mean temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius.

In summer, 80 percent of Yamal’s territory is covered by lakes, swamps and rivers, which considerably limits the possibilities for industrial construction.

Gazprom has been employing efficient, safe and innovative technologies and technical solutions in Yamal.

Many of those innovations were developed at the company’s request by leading Russian research institutions and companies.

Equinor, one of the main pipeline natural gas suppliers to Europe and operator of the Norwegian oil and gas fields and the Hammerfest LNG export plant, said it was proud to bring on stream the Johan Sverdrup oil and gas project with its long-term energy and financial benefits.