LNG

Fortum, the Finnish energy and power company with European Union-wide operations and that was forced to give up the German natural gas and energy supplier Uniper which had relied on Russian pipeline supplies from Gazprom, has returned to profits and gave an overview of current EU energy markets and prices.

The Russian Finance Ministry said that that the federation’s oil and gas revenues decreased by 26 percent in the first 10 months of the year amid warnings that natural gas and LNG producer Gazprom was heading for record losses and another gas company Novatek faced financial disruption to its Arctic LNG II project.

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.

March 30 (LNGJ) - The Danish Energy Agency said that the suspicious object found on the Baltic Sea bed beside the Nord Stream II pipeline had been assessed on a salvage mission just carried out and was found not to pose a danger. With a view to further clarifying the nature of the object, Denmark decided to salvage the object with assistance from the Norwegian Armed Forces.

   “The defence forces have stated that the salvage was carried out at a depth of 73 metres. The salvage took place with the participation of a representative from the owner company Nord Stream II AG,” the Agency stated. “The investigations indicated that it was an empty smoke buoy, which is used for visual marking. The object does not pose a security risk. Other questions regarding the salvage and the object are referred to the Norwegian Armed Forces,” it added.

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.

UK major Shell plc posted the company’s highest ever annual profits helped by record natural gas prices as its LNG sales volumes also increased during the quarter and for the full year.

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.

Deutsche ReGas GmbH, a private company running the floating LNG import project at the German Baltic port of Lubmin to supply 4.5 million tonnes per annum of cargoes, has started a series of complex operations using a variety of vessels as part of its commissioning process.

The port of Lubmin in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is best known as the landfall for the shutdown Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea from Russia.

Lubmin has been chosen by the German Federal Government as one of four coastal hubs for LNG floating storage and regasification (FSRU) imports because of existing German gas grid links.

Deutsche ReGas said that in the first phase of its project the natural gas would be fed into the German long-distance gas pipeline network (EUGAL/NEL), which is only 450 metres away.

The EUGAL gas pipeline was designed to be the onshore extension of the Nord Stream II project that was never started up.

The company also explained that to take account of the shallow depth of the water around the port of Lubmin, another tanker would be stationed outside the shallower approaches to which LNG carriers of up to 170,000 cubic metres would be able to dock and make LNG transfers.

The company explained that from the floating storage unit, three shuttle ships (small LNG carriers) would transport the LNG to the FSRU in the Lubmin industrial port.

Small carriers

The small-scale LNG carrier, the “Coral Furcata” with 10,000 cubic metres capacity arrived at Lubmin on December 30 with the first cargo to be used for commissioning purposes.

“The LNG was previously picked up by the ‘Hispania’, anchored off Rügen, and will now be handed over to the ‘Neptune’, which is in the port, as part of the permitted test operations of the LNG terminal,” explained Deutsche ReGas.

“The test operation is very extensive and complex,” stated the company.

“At sea, the procedures between the FSU anchored off Rügen island and the small-scale LNG carriers must be rehearsed,” it added.

“The manoeuvring of the SLNGCs in the port of Lubmin and the interaction with the tug crews must now also become a reality after previous training,” said Deutsche ReGas.

The company added that the interfaces between the FSRU and the shore connection as well as the FSRU and the shuttle ship must be further prepared and tested.

“During this phase on the ‘Neptune’, all of the processes and systems required for commissioning must be prepared. This is then followed by various operational tests, which usually end with a reliability and endurance test of the feed pumps,” the company said.

Deutsche ReGas said that as part of the test operations, the first quantities of LNG are being regasified and supplied to the German network operator Gascade GmbH.

“But we don't want to call this a feed-in, so as not to build up false expectations here,” the company emphasized.

Stephan Knabe, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche ReGas, said he would like to state that the feed-in, i.e. commercial operation, only begins with the start of regular operations immediately after the successful completion of the test phase and after receipt of the operating permit.

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.