LNG

Equinor of Norway has signed a new agreement starting immediately to supply German utility and LNG market participant RWE with pipeline natural gas.

The German Parliament has voted to allow the development before the winter of a liquefied natural gas import facility in the port of Mukran on the island of Rügen and involving the “FSRU Transgas Power” vessel.

“The Bundestag and Bundesrat both voted on July 7 to allow the construction of an LNG terminal in the port of Mukran on the island of Rügen. Both voted for an amendment to the LNG Acceleration Act,” said a statement.

“The terminal in the port of Mukran should be available for this winter in about six months’ time,” added the Government statement.

Analysts note that the LNG import issue has become a key policy for Chancellor Olaf Stolz’s coalition Government and has caused a partial split with the Greens within the coalition.

Time limitation

The SPD in the Baltic Coast area of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the “FSRU Transgas Power” is to be deployed, are calling for a limitation on the duration of the FLNG project in Mukran.

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's state Environment Minister Till Backhaus, a member of the SPD, said that the applications for the planned LNG terminal have still to be thoroughly examined and were far from complete.

According to Backhaus, the responsible authorities in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will take a very close look at the applications and may seek amendments.

“From my point of view, the last word has not yet been spoken on the length of the project. We will not accept operating the LNG terminal for the current time span of 20 years,” stated Backhaus.

The Mukran terminal will be part of the operations of Deutsche ReGas GmbH, which has other vessels at the nearby Baltic port of Lubmin and signed an agreement in June 2023 with the Federal Government on deploying the “FSRU Transgas Power”.

Conditions

“The company will be the sub-charterer of the regasification ship to be used together with the ‘Neptune’ in Phase II of the LNG terminal ‘Deutsche Ostsee’ in the port of Mukran,” stated Deutsche ReGas.

It added that as agreed, Deutsche ReGas will assume the rights and obligations of the head charterer in the contract between the Federal Government and Greek shipowner Dynagas.

The Maltese-flagged vessel has 174,000 cubic metres of capacity. It was delivered to Dynagas in 2021 and has a regasification capacity of up to 7.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas per annum.

The Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency) allowed Deutsche ReGas, a private company, to set up LNG import facilities on the basis that a minimum amount of gas was imported.

Deutsche ReGas said that when the Mukran Port operation starts the total injection capacity of the Baltic LNG operations will total 13.5 Bcm per annum, which would be in accordance with the Bundesnetzagentur requirements.

Energy ministers of the 27-nation European Union failed to reach an agreement at a council meeting in Brussels on imposing a maximum price for natural gas that would have impacted markets including, LNG cargo pricing and pipeline supplies from Norway.

The state government in the German state of Lower Saxony has decided to co-finance an LNG import project called the Hanseatic Energy Hub GmbH and located in the port of Stade on the Elbe River as confusion surrounded the exact number of ventures moving forward in Germany and their start-up dates.

The German government has selected a consortium to jointly develop and deploy a fifth floating import facility offshore the leading European Union economy for liquefied natural gas to replace Russian pipeline gas volumes.

Germany’s Deputy Finance Minister Jörg Kukies said at an energy conference in Australia that even as German liquefied natural gas import terminals were being rapidly developed to help replace Russian pipeline gas the joint supply of 30 billion cubic metres of LNG by the United States and Qatar still left a huge gap.

Canada is moving to avoid being blamed for natural gas supplies to Germany being cut off by Russian company Gazprom by returning a gas turbine needed for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that had been seized under sanctions when sent to Montreal by Siemens Energy for a scheduled maintenance programme.

Germany, which is marginally increasing its LNG import plans to replace Russian natural gas, has also come up with a Greens Party-inspired move to give up at least 2 percent of German “Lebensraum” for onshore giant wind turbines.

Feb 22 (LNGJ) - Hanseatic Energy Hub GmbH, a German company developing an LNG import terminal at the town of Stade on the Elbe River, said that the company still intended to submit application documents this summer to seek planning permission. “The plans for Germany's first LNG terminal are taking shape,” Hanseatic Energy managing partner Johann Killinger was cited as saying in the Hamburg-based newspaper “Die Zeit”. “In the most favourable case, the approval process could take one to one-and-a-half years and then the building starts,” said Killinger.

   He added that the terminal was expected to cost €800 million ($907M) and would be adjacent to a plant owned by US multinational Dow Chemical. “Natural gas as a fossil energy source is still needed. The early phase-out of coal and the phase-out of nuclear power (in Germany) should be completed by the end of the year. But it doesn't work without gas. The share will even have to increase before you can say goodbye to gas,” stated the executive.

Germany, the world’s fourth-largest consumer of coal and which is celebrating the near completion of the controversial Nord Stream II gas pipeline from Russia, is set for a week of protests by environmental and left-wing activists - at the site of what will be the country’s first LNG import terminal.

Police said that the protesters were setting up a camp and plan blockades and other activities on approach roads to the LNG terminal location at Brunsbüttel from July 29 to August 2.

“It is assumed that most of the participants in the ‘climate camp’ will express their protest peacefully,” a spokesman for the Schleswig-Holstein state police told the Germany news agency DPA.

The state police said that several hundred officers would be on duty at the LNG terminal site from July 28 through August 2.

The developers of the Brunsbüttel terminal have received all of their regulatory permits.

However, since the terminal’s engineering phase gathered pace, the state Greens party has called for the project to be halted, claiming that it would a centre for the import of US LNG made from feed-gas that was a product of hydraulic fracturing.

German natural gas supplies mostly come from Russia's Gazprom and the Nord Steam I and new Nord Stream II projects and from offshore fields in Norwegian waters.

Elbe River

Brunsbüttel, on the Elbe River near Hamburg, is the most advanced of just two terminals moving forward.

The second terminal is west of Hamburg and also on the Elbe at the town of Stade.

The Brunsbüttel terminal is scheduled to be commissioned around July 2024 and the Stade facility a year later.

The Brunsbüttel joint venture is owned by two Dutch companies, Gasunie LNG Holding BV and Royal Dutch Vopak, as well as Oiltanking GmbH, a subsidiary of Marquard & Bahls AG, based in Hamburg.

The aim of the joint venture is to build and operate a multifunctional import and distribution terminal for LNG.

The terminal will also provide a wide range of services including the loading and unloading of LNG carriers, the temporary storage of LNG, regasification, feeding natural gas into the German natural gas network, and distribution of LNG via tank trucks and LNG railcars.

The developers opted for the location at Brunsbüttel because of its proximity to Hamburg and the many manufacturing companies based in the region.