LNG

Russian natural gas company Gazprom has signed up the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan as its newest customer after the cut-off in 2022 of European pipeline gas deliveries by the Nord Stream route to Germany after the Ukraine invasion.

Deutsche ReGas GmbH, the German owner of the floating LNG terminal at the Baltic port of Lubmin, and German Transmission System Operator, Gascade GmbH, are organising a “town hall” event to try and clear the way for the fifth out of six proposed floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs) to be deployed off Mukran Port on Rügen, Germany’s largest island in the Baltic Sea.

The Ministry of Economics is determined that at least one of the six government-chartered FSRUs be deployed at Rügen, near Lubmin, before winter 2023 to handle an additional five billion cubic metres per annum of regasified LNG .

The plans call for import facilities to be established off the southeast cost of Rügen several kilometres from the resorts of Sassnitz and Ostseebad-Blinz.

This Rügen FSRU plan has led to opposition and some demonstrations from locals backed by Green party activitists who believe that the replacement energy sources for halted Russian pipeline gas would harm the tourist industry on the island in what was a part of the former East Germany.

Deutsche Regas and Gascade have called the public meeting for the town of Ostseebad-Binz on June 20 as imports are due to start before the end of the year.

Progress

As part of efforts to replace lost Russian pipeline gas supplies, the German government has been installing LNG terminals along its coast with the first to start operations in January 2023 being the Deutsche Regas terminal at Lubmin.

The facilities at Lubmin are about 40 nautical miles from Sassnitz and Mukran port that are part of the German federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

As 2023 has progressed, Berlin has inaugurated several other FSRUs at the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven and at Brunsbüttel on the Elbe River.

The floating LNG terminals import gas mainly from the US and Qatar and the volumes are delivered into the German energy grid and beyond.

There are also plans for some of the FSRUs to be replaced by permanent onshore regasification facilities as in Brunsbüttel.

Deutsche Regas has advertised the town hall-style gathering on its Web site proclaiming “citizen information event about the LNG terminal in Mukran”.

The event has been scheduled for Tuesday, June 20, at 5 pm local time at the Kurhaus-Saal venue near Schillerstraße in Ostseebad-Binz.

“All are welcome and a project presentation will start at 5:45 pm followed by a questions and answers session with the end of the event scheduled for 7:00pm,” said Deutsche Regas and Gascade in their invitation.  

Open Season June 29

Deutsche Regas is trying to clear the way for the June 29 Open Season launch for Phase II capacity of the LNG terminal expansion to Mukran port.

“In Phase II, it is planned to operate the floating LNG terminal consisting of two FSRUs in the port of Mukran from December 2023 and to connect it to the gas pipeline network via a new connecting line between Mukran and Lubmin,” explained Deutsche Regas in a statement.

“In Phase II, the planned annual throughput capacity for natural gas is up to 13.5 billion cubic metres,” it added.

Gascade was involved in helping with the development of the Deutsche Regas FRSU terminal at Lubmin.

In just a few weeks, Gascade completed the pipeline link to the gas landfall at Greifswald with connections to the NEL (North European Natural Gas Pipeline), OPAL (Ostsee-Pipeline-Anbindungsleitung) and EUGAL (European Gas Pipeline Link) connections to the gas grids of the rest of Germany and the European Union.

Russian natural gas company Gazprom said it had halted supplies to China through the “Power of Siberia” pipeline running from Russia’s Far East into China’s northeast Heilongjiang province.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz formally opened the nation’s second liquefied natural gas terminal since its reliance on Russian pipeline gas came to a close in 2022 and fast-track developments have been made possible due to the support and know-how in particular of French and Dutch energy and shipping companies.

The bankruptcy procedure for Nord Stream II AG, the Swiss-based operator of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, was extended by six more months until July 2023, according to the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce.

The European energy crisis is expected to last for several years and in addition to limits on global liquefied natural gas supplies there has also been less than adequate investment in regasification facilities.

The European Union was scheduled to hold an emergency energy council meeting in Brussels on September 30 to discuss the consequences of the two leaking Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea that appear to have been sabotaged and to also address high energy prices.

A leak of natural gas from the blocked Russian Nord Stream II link to Germany that was never brought on line but was fully primed to start up has led Denmark to advise Baltic Sea shipping not to come within 5 kilometres of the pipeline.

Germany said Chancellor Olaf Scholz would discuss energy supplies, including possible LNG shipments, when he begins a tour on September 25 of the Arabian Gulf states.

A statement said that Scholz was scheduled to visit three countries Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

“The gas offering is slowly broadening,” said German Economics Minister Robert Habeck while visiting the Baltic Coast town of Lubmin.

Lubmin is in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and came to prominence in the gas business by being a landfall for the cancelled Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline under the Baltic from Russia.

Nord Stream II would have doubled German pipeline imports from Gazprom, though the completed project was blocked by the European Commission and also by Chancellor Scholz’s new coalition government that won the elections in September 2021.

Lubmin will now become one of four coastal hubs for LNG imports from the US, other European countries and possibly Qatar and the UAE.

“We must show that in times like these, we can plan, authorize and build faster than is usually the case in Germany,” said Habeck on the plan to site a floating storage and regasification unit at Lubmin.

Habeck is also Vice Chancellor and a member of the Green Party.

Start-ups

The operators of the Lubmin FSRU to be chartered by the German Government is aiming for an operational start-up by the end of 2023.

Germany’s opposition parties that won power before the events in Ukraine have mostly been against using natural gas.

The country was also one of the few leading European Union economies without LNG infrastructure, though one terminal was planned on the Elbe River but constantly opposed and demonstrated against as recently as last year by Habeck's Green Party and its supporters.

They quickly changed their minds on LNG after the gas crisis erupted and it was deemed to be a “transition” fuel by the panicked European Commission late in the day in 2022.

Other German LNG import terminal plans include a mixture of FSRUs and onshore facilities, though a final project list has yet to be published.

Among those advancing is an FSRU venture and a possible onshore facility at the port of Stade on the Elbe River backed by state government of Lower Saxony and by a development company, Hanseatic Energy Hub GmbH.

German is acquiring at least five FSRUs to move away as fast as possible from dependence on Russian pipeline natural gas from Gazprom.

The Stade seaport is situated on the Elbe sea-lane between Hamburg and the Elbe estuary at Cuxhaven and is close to the North Sea.

Chancellor Scholz said in a speech on September 13 that a series of planned new LNG import facilities would be ready for imports by the end of 2023.

He expected facilities to be developed quickly at the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven and at Brunsbüttel, located south of Hamburg on the Elbe River and near the entrance to the Kiel Canal.

According to the German government, Wilhelmshaven will become the first LNG hub. Brunsbüttel will be the second to be completed and is backed by the Government, German utilities and the Dutch utility Gasunie.

The German Government has warned of a serious power situation in the country after a decision by Russian natural gas company Gazprom to cut flows further by 50 percent on the Nord Stream I pipeline, reducing overall capacity to just  20 percent from July 27.