LNG

The Hong Kong floating liquefied natural gas import project has begun commissioning for the start of commercial operations planned for June using the world’s largest floating storage and regasification unit, the “FSRU Bauhinia Spirit”.

The commissioning cargo, provided by Hong Kong stock exchange-listed Chinese major, PetroChina, was unloaded on May 15 and will contribute to cool-down operations along the specially built jetty, as well as the storage tanks and pipelines.

Two subsea gas pipelines are connected from the FLNG terminal to Hong Kong’s Black Point Power Station and the Lamma Power Station respectively.

The terminal trial processes are also part of the procedure before the senior project contractor, the China Offshore Oil Engineering Company (COOEC), a subsidiary of China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), hands over the facility to the joint venture company Hong Kong LNG Terminal Ltd.

Owners

The owners of the terminal venture are the two local power utilities, Hong Kong Electric Power Co. and Castle Peak Power (CLP) Hong Kong Ltd..

They had initially proposed the terminal to Japanese shipping company, Mitsui OSK Lines, using MOL’s “FSRU Challenger”, now renamed “FSRU Bauhinia Spirit” and with 263,000 cubic metres capacity.

The FSRU had arrived offshore Hong Kong in the middle of April to prepare for the project launch at a site about 25 kilometres (15.5 miles) southwest of Hong Kong Island

HK Electric is the historic supplier of electricity to customers on Hong Kong and Lamma Islands.

CLP Hong Kong Limited (CLP Power) is a subsidiary of CLP Holdings, a company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and now one of the largest investor-owned power businesses in Asia.

The CLP Group has other power assets in Mainland China, Australia, India, Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

The Hong Kong project increases regasification facilities available to the Chinese to 25 and with half-a-dozen other projects planned on the mainland, not including the expansion of existing terminals.

Coal-to-gas

CLP Power said that it had substantially increased the proportion of natural gas in Hong Kong’s fuel mix to around 50 percent since 2020.

“Planning and construction of the offshore LNG terminal began a few years ago which underlines the importance of long-term planning to the energy industry,” added CLP Power.

HK Electric’s Managing Director Wan Chi-Tin said that the utility has always aimed to switch from coal-fired to gas-fired generation as natural gas is a fuel for the energy transition.

“The commissioning of the gas-fired unit L11 in 2022 at Lamma Power Station enabled us to generate over half of our electricity from natural gas,” he said.

“Another gas-fired unit, L12, is expected to commence operation in early 2024, which will further increase the share of natural gas in our fuel mix. The offshore LNG terminal, once in operation, will enhance supply security and cost effectiveness,” Wan added.

Mitsui OSK Lines, the Japanese shipping company with an operating fleet of almost 100 liquefied natural gas carriers, has changed an order with a South Korean shipyard because of the cancellation of the LNG import terminal project for the German North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven.

MOL said its order for a floating storage and regasfication unit (FSRU) with South Korean shipbuilder Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) had been altered to a conventional LNG carrier described as “super large”.

The Japanese shipping line was forced to act after German utility Uniper called off the Wilhelmshaven import project.

Mol ordered the FSRU from DSME in May 2020 and subsequently signed a charter on the ordered unit with the Wilhelmshaven project. The FSRU had been planned for delivery by the end of June 2023.

Wilhelmshaven is Germany's only deep-sea port in the North Sea and would have been capable of offloading the largest LNG carriers.

The FSRU for the German port was to have had capacity of 263,000 cubic metres capacity with a unique design tailored to large-scale imports. MOL already has an LNG vessel of similar size, the “MOL FSRU Challenger”.

Uniper, based in Düsseldorf, said at the end of 2020 that it was unlikely to pursue the LNG venture because of several factors, including the reluctance of market players to make binding bookings for import capacities.

Uniper has since then switched its focus to other fuels and under the name “Green Wilhelmshaven”, Uniper is working on a feasibility study for the development of a German hydrogen hub.

Wilhelmshaven was one of two LNG import terminals being planned by Germany at the start of 2020. The second is an onshore facility at Brunsbüttel, a port on the Elbe River, south of Hamburg.

However, with the demise of the Uniper-led Wilhelmshaven LNG project another German import development has come to the fore at the port of Stade, also on the Elbe.

Fluxys, the Belgian natural gas grid company and owner of the Zeebrugge LNG import terminal, has agreed to become a partner and operator for the Stade project, known as the Hanseatic Energy Hub.

Fluxys will be an industrial partner in Hanseatic Energy whose other additional investor is the Partners Group, a Swiss-listed private asset management firm.

Under the development plan, the German terminal will be located about 45 kilometres (28 miles) from Hamburg and be operational by 2026 with capacity of around 8.5 million tonnes per annum of LNG.

The terminal replacing Wilhelmshaven will also have facilities for reloading LNG carriers, supplying river barges for bunkering as well as truck and rail-loading capability.