LNG

The Finnish gas market has opened up to competition with a wholesale market for pipeline natural gas after the transmission network was unbundled from LNG and gas firm Gasum.

Gasum, the Nordic natural gas company and LNG supplier based in Finland, said it had agreed to acquire two businesses from the German group, Linde AG, with one involved in the clean energy sector and another in LNG maritime fuel.

Gasum, the natural gas network company in Finland and a leading Nordic liquefied natural gas supplier, reported nine-month earnings down by 7.2 percent as its clean energy policies proved to be slow in growing profits as it also prepared for the opening up of the market with the spinning off of a new company called Gasgrid Finland.

The Finnish liquefied natural gas-powered icebreaker “Polaris”, the first of its kind in the world, has completed its first bunkering operation at the Tornio Manga import terminal in Finland.

There are two Finnish import terminals at Tornio and Pori. The “Polaris”, which runs on both low-sulfur marine diesel and LNG, requires around 700 cubic metres of LNG when re-fueling.

It can be bunkered either in port in a quayside truck-to-ship operation or at a terminal. The “Polaris” is in the government-owned ice-breaking fleet of Arctia and is one of eight vessels.

The “Polaris” area of operations is with two other ice-breakers assisting shipping traffic in the Bothnian Bay area of the northern Baltic Sea.

“The Nordic region’s largest LNG receiving terminal provided the cleanest fuel in a port surrounded by ice at least four months a year,” said Arctia of the latest fuel operation.

Finland’s Arctech Helsinki Shipyard built the “Polaris” and its first bunkering was carried out in June 2016 by the Skangas unit of Finnish natural gas company Gasum.
This was a truck-to-ship bunkering operation organized at Vuosaari harbour in Finland.

The LNG-powered “Polaris” is designed to continuously move through ice that is up to 1.6 metres thick.

The vessel can also break a 25-metre wide channel in 1.2 metre-thick ice at a speed of 6 knots, as well as to reach 9-11 knots of average assistance speed in the Baltic Sea.

Gasum is the leading Nordic supplier of LNG as well as having regasification and bunkering assets to cater for various markets from shipping to the industrial sectors in Finland, Sweden and Norway.

In addition to the two import terminals, Gasum owns a small-scale liquefaction plant in Risavika in Norway and two other regasification terminals at Ora in Norway and in Lysekil in Sweden.

Lyse Group, the Norwegian company owned by 16 municipalities that first acquired waterfall rights one hundred years ago to help develop hydro-electric power stations, has sold its remaining 30 percent in Nordic LNG company Skangas to majority-owner Gasum of Finland.