LNG

The Philippines Department of Energy has approved a seventh LNG import project, though the first is not scheduled to come on line until later in 2023 as the southeast Asian nation appears left on the starting line compared with the rapid deployment of infrastructure in Germany in a matter of months rather than the years it's taking to  complete one Filipino regasification venture.

Jan 13 (LNGJ) - TotalEnergies said an official inauguration ceremony would be held on Saturday, January 14, for the floating LNG import terminal at the Baltic port of Lubmin and attended by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to mark commissioning. The floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU), the “Neptune”, was chartered from TotalEnergies by the Lubmin project developers, a private company called Deutsche ReGas GmbH.

   “The vessel has an annual regasification capacity of 5 billion cubic metres of gas, enough to cover about 5 percent of German demand,” said the French major. “Following Deutsche ReGas’s open season procedure in October 2022 TotalEnergies also contracted regasification capacity of 2.6 Bcm per year and began to deliver LNG from its global integrated portfolio to the Lubmin terminal,” added TotalEnergies.

Dec 15 (LNGJ) - Höegh LNG Holdings said it signed a binding 10-year time charter contract with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. The Norwegian shipping company added that its floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) “Höegh Esperanza” had been allocated to the contract.

   The company said the vessel would be located at the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven and be operated by German utility Uniper acting as agent on behalf of the charterer. “We are very pleased and honoured to be signing the time charter contract with the Federal Government of Germany and look forward to working in close collaboration with Uniper in Wilhelmshaven,” said Erik Nyheim, Höegh LNG’s President and Chief Executive.

The Trading Hub Europe (THE) GmbH of Germany has launched an invitation to bid for the provision of natural gas balancing services in the period from January 2023 through March 2023 to meet its long-term balancing requirements in the multi-quality German market area.

Deutsche ReGas, a private company that has raised financing from Australian investment bank Macquarie Capital, is run by two businessmen from Potsdam near Berlin and said it aimed to import LNG in the next few months at the Baltic port of Lubmin.

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. 

Germany, the leading European Union economy with plans for about half-a-dozen LNG import projects to replace halted Russian pipeline gas, has seen spot natural gas prices drop by over 55 percent since a government energy package was unveiled and the nation’s gas storage levels jumped to be almost full.