LNG

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. 

Technip Energies, the leading energy and LNG project company with contracts at leading global ventures including in Arctic Russia, offshore Africa and in Mexico, reported a jump in first-quarter revenues and profits.

The Dutch Gate LNG import terminal in Rotterdam has awarded a contract to Spanish energy engineering company Sener to provide engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) services needed for better maintenance and the improvement of activities in work scheduled for 2021.

TechnipFMC, the company that has put on hold its de-merger into two separate entities for subsea and LNG projects because of Covid-19 and the oil slump, has launched with services firm Halliburton Company a new technology product for subsea wells.

TechnipFMC and Halliburton introduced their trade-marked Odassea system, which they described as the first distributed acoustic sensing solution for subsea wells.

“The technology platform enables operators to execute intervention-less seismic imaging and reservoir diagnostics to reduce total cost of ownership while improving reservoir knowledge,” they explained.

“The Odassea service integrates hardware and digital systems to strengthen digital capabilities in subsea reservoir monitoring and production optimization,” their statement added.

Halliburton provides the fiber optic sensing technology, completions and analysis for reservoir diagnostics while TechnipFMC provides the optical connectivity from the topside to the completions.

“Through the collaboration, operators can accelerate full field subsea fiber optic sensing, design and execution,” they stated.

TechnipFMC has two main offices in both Houston and Paris and said in March 2020 it was delaying plans to separate into two companies because of volatile market conditions created by the coronavirus outbreak.

The company had first announced the proposal in August 2019 and planning was well advanced when the pandemic and oil price slump impacted markets in mid-March.

TechnipFMC then said on March 16, 2020 that the global pandemic, a sharp drop in oil prices and heightened volatility in global financial markets had “created a market environment that is not currently conducive to the company’s separation” plans.

On the latest joint venture, TechnipFMC and Halliburton said they were delivering solutions with the technology to multiple subsea projects at all stages from conceptual design to execution and installation.

“This project enables an enhanced level of reservoir understanding for our customers and expands our unique integrated subsea solution,” said Christina Johansen, Vice President of TechnipFMC Subsea Product Manufacturing.

”We are proving that we can leverage the competencies and know-how to drive the change our industry needs for a higher level of sustainability,” she stated.

With the de-merger on hold TechnipFMC has still overhauled its divisions with Onshore-Offshore having been renamed Technip Energies, in-line with the new scope of the business.

The company said in its most recent earnings that despite the challenges and a softening of near-term LNG markets, the long-term fundamentals for natural gas, and LNG in particular, remained strong.

The two other TechnpFMC divisions are Subsea and Surface Technologies.

Gaztransport and Technigaz (GTT), the French technology designer of LNG maritime and onshore storage systems, reported a 74 percent rise in first-quarter revenues as orders were solid and it began expanding its services offerings.

TechnipFMC, the Franco-US energy and LNG engineering company, has posted falling second-quarter revenues and net income compared with last year in weak results that were offset by a high level of new orders.

Doris Engineering, the French energy contracts company with global operations, said it completed a study for Western Gas, an Australian operator based in Perth and developing the Equus natural gas field offshore Western Australia.