LNG

Enagás, the Spanish natural gas operator of six large LNG terminals and with gas assets in other European countries and overseas, has reported a surge in customers for its LNG bunkering services along the Spanish coastline and even more fuel will be supplied in 2024 as bunkering vessels arrive on station.

Enagás, the Spanish natural gas operator of six large LNG terminals and with gas assets in other European countries and overseas, reported a fall in net profits as Spanish gas and power demand dropped, offset by a one-time gain from the sale of a stake in a gas pipeline in Mexico.

Enagás, the Spanish natural gas operator of six large LNG terminals and with gas assets in other European countries, has successfully sold €600 million of bonds as it also allocated half of its available regasification capacity for the next 15 years.

The Enagás 10-year bonds will mature in 2034 and have an annual coupon of 3.625 percent.

The bonds had five-times more offers to buy than the issuance required.

“Although the company does not have relevant maturities until the end of the year, it has taken advantage of the good market conditions at the beginning of the year to carry out this issue, extend the average life of its debt and thus have part of the upcoming maturities covered,” the Madrid-based company explained.

“The success of the placement, both in term and in financing cost, contributes to improving the good financial situation of the company, which has diversified financing sources,” it added.

Slot allocations

Spain’s Enagas said that its recent LNG allocation represented nearly all of the slots it had offered to date, reinforcing Spain’s status as key hub for LNG imports in Europe.

The prominence of the Spanish in the LNG sector is further highlighted by the fact that its regasification terminals accounted for almost one-third of LNG storage in Europe as of mid-January 2024.

Enagás also started up the El Musel LNG trans-shipment terminal in 2023 in the Port of Gijón in northwest Spain to supply other EU nations and assigned its logistics services to the European utility Endesa.

The grid company owns five large Spanish terminals at Barcelona in the northeast, at Cartagena in the southeast, at Sagunto in the east of Spain, at Huelva in the southwest and the El Musel facility.

Enagás additionally holds a 50 percent stake at another northwest facility serving the northwest port of Bilbao and owns two small regasification terminals in the Canary Islands.

Spain’s storage levels are still at around 85 percent filled and the LNG is supplemented by pipeline gas supplies from Algeria.

Other stakes

Enagás in July 2023 closed an agreement to acquire an additional 4 percent stake in the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), taking its stake in the pipeline bringing Azerbaijan gas to Europe up to 20 percent.

In other LNG activities outside of Spain, Enagás became an industrial partner with a 10 percent stake in the Hanseatic Energy Hub consortium planning an onshore LNG import terminal at the German North Sea port of Stade.

The Spanish government said that the liquefied natural gas carrier, the “Bilbao Knutsen”, sustained damage when it collided with another vessel near the LNG import terminal at the Port of Huelva on the Gulf of Cadiz in southwest Spain.

Enagás, the Spanish national gas grid operator with Europe’s largest LNG import terminal network, posted lower first-quarter net profits, though praised the contribution to earnings of its Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) investment.

Endesa, the largest power company in Spain and the second-largest natural gas operator, has launched a project to expand its port terminal in Los Barrios in the Port of Algeciras to capture the liquefied natural gas bunkering business around Cádiz and in the Strait of Gibraltar.

HAM Group, the Spanish LNG fuel provider and filing station developer, has signed a truck-loading agreement with a French truck-loading import terminal near Marseilles because of expected unavailability in Spain through gas network company and LNG terminal operator Enagás.