LNG

Baker Hughes, the US liquefied natural gas equipment-maker and energy services company, posted increased third-quarter revenues and earnings backed by liquefied natural gas and subsea contracts.

Gasum, the Finnish state-run natural gas company and leading Nordic LNG supplier, has entered a partnership with Swedish truck manufacturer Scania for more gas-fuelled access in the region and a filling station at the Scania logistics centre.

Gasum is building a new filling station offering liquefied natural gas and compressed gas in Södertälje in Sweden.

The new station is located near the Södertälje Syd road junction in direct connection with Scania’s production plant and will open in the first half of 2024. 

“The partnership between Gasum and Scania enables the station to be built at this logistics hub and so marks a significant development in promoting a more sustainable transport system in the region,” said the Finnish company.

Gasum, which is also Sweden’s largest biogas producer, said it was continuing to expand gas infrastructure in Sweden by opening the new gas filling station in Södertälje. 

Both trucks and ordinary vehicles will be able to refuel with LNG or CNG at the Södertälje-Syd road junction. 

Gasum noted that the partnership with Scania enabled the filling station to be built in this strategic location where access to land would otherwise have been challenging.

”The partnership with Scania is perfect from all perspectives. They are at the forefront of gas-powered truck development and the fact that they provided land for this project demonstrates the strength of a shared focus on sustainable solutions and secure energy supply in this growing area,” explained Sharareh Edström, Head of Business Traffic Sweden at Gasum.

Gasum said that the new filling station in Södertälje provided improved access to better technology compared with the older existing stations in Järna and Älvsjö, which will be decommissioned. 

The company said that there would be LNG dispensers and two CNG dispensers from the outset. 

This is more than the standard design and would allow faster refuelling and “considerably greater capacity” compared to older stations.

Jonas Strömberg, Sustainable Transport Solutions Manager at Scania, said he was very happy to be able to contribute to the expansion of biogas and LNG infrastructure in Sweden.

“The strategic location of the new station between the E20 and E4 means that it will play an important role in the transition to a sustainable transport system,” explained  Strömberg.

“Building the station also comes at a good time for Scania since there is rapidly increasing demand for flexible transport solutions,” he added.

Chart Industries Inc., the liquefied natural gas equipment-maker and industrial gas technology company, has signed an accord with US company Koch Engineered Solutions (KES) aimed at providing full carbon-capture solutions to key customers in the energy sector and other industries.

Chart Industries, the US LNG and industrial gases equipment-maker, has completed the acquisition of Fronti Fabrications Inc., a specialist in engineering, machining and welding for the cryogenic and gas sectors.

TechnipFMC said it was launching a placement of 16 million shares in Technip Energies, one of the world’s leading liquefied natural gas engineering companies, representing around 9 percent of the outstanding share capital of Technip Energies.

Air Products, the US provider of LNG equipment with new liquefaction contracts for Qatar, Mozambique and Mexico, has opened a new hydrogen fueling station at its industrial gases facility in Ulsan City in South Korea.

Renergen, the emerging South African natural gas and helium company with liquefied natural gas and liquefied helium production plans as part of the Virginia Gas project in the Free State, has announced very positive laboratory results on commercial helium concentrations, boosting its share price.

Royal Dutch Shell, with one of the largest global LNG sales portfolios, has warned investors to expect post-tax charges of between $3.5 billion and $4.5 billion in relation to impairments, asset restructuring and onerous gas contracts in the fourth-quarter earnings in February 2021.

Russian natural gas company Gazprom said more than 30,000 workers were on site to complete the Amur Gas Processing Plant, part of the “Power of Siberia” project already bringing pipeline gas to China and with an affiliated LNG liquefaction plant to fuel trucks carrying containers of liquid helium for export.

The Amur venture is more than 70 percent complete and Gazprom said a recruitment process for the GPP’s future full-time staff was underway.

“Other aspects of the project include the building of a small-scale liquefaction plant for LNG trucking,” said Gazprom.

The company said in its update report that the first two Amur processing lines would be on stream in 2021.

“Start-up and commissioning operations continue at the first two Amur gas trains and external thermal insulation is being installed on the core equipment,” added Gazprom.

“This is the final stage of preparations for load testing,” stated the company.

The construction of the Amur GPP is one of the largest infrastructure projects of Gazprom in Russia’s Far East.

During the 2020 navigation season, 50 pieces of large equipment weighing a total of some 8,000 tons were delivered by sea and river vessels to the Amur GPP’s wharf.

The GPP will receive heat and electricity from the Svobodny thermal power plant.

The construction of the power plant’s main building and structures is already finished. In December 2020, the “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline started feeding gas to the TPP for the purpose of start-up and commissioning of the gas-using equipment.

The Amur plant will process multi-component natural gas received via the “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline from the Yakutia and Irkutsk gas production centres,.

“Valuable components extracted in the course of processing will be used as feedstock for the petrochemical and other industries,” explained Gazprom.

The Amur GPP is being built near the town of and will have final design capacity to process 42 billion cubic metres of per annum of natural gas.

The GPP will include the world’s largest helium production facilities with an annual capacity of up to 60 million cubic metres.

The plant will have six production trains. While the first two lines will start in the coming year, the other four would be consecutively put in operation before the end of 2024.

In addition to natural gas and helium, the GPP’s commercial products will include ethane, propane, butane, and pentane-hexane fraction.

A Gazprom subsidiary called, Pererabotka Blagoveshchensk, is the project company for the Amur GPP. Construction management is being carried out by NIPIGAZ, part of the Sibur Group.

gazprom said a central link in the export system for commercial helium, one of the components that will be extracted at Amur, will be the Logistics Centre for servicing thermally-insulated containers.

“The Centre, which is being set up near the city of Vladivostok, will be the world’s largest hub for delivering liquid helium to the global market,” Gazprom explained.

At present, construction of the hub’s off-site facilities is finished, the core and auxiliary process equipment is installed, and electricity is now being supplied to the Logistics Centre.

“A natural gas liquefaction unit is currently being built with the aim of refueling trucks that will carry the containers,” said Gazprom

The pipeline gas supplies for China started operations in December 2019 via Gazprom’s “Power of Siberia” trunkline from the Chayandinskoye gas field.

In the year since the launch of “Power of Siberia”, Gazprom said a total of 3.84 Bcm had been supplied to China via the trunkline, which was less than the expected 5 Bcm.

Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp. have signed a 30-year supply agreement for Russian gas to be supplied via the eastern route amounting to 38 Bcm per annum once incremental increases had been met over a period of five years.

Chart Industries, the US LNG equipment-maker and supplier, has completed the acquisition of the Alabama-based cryogenic trailer and hydrogen trailer transport assets of Worthington Industries.