LNG

June 20 (LNGJ) - The Netherlands was receiving two LNG cargoes, one from Norway and one from the United States. The “BW Pavilion Aranthera” with 173,400 cubic metres capacity is scheduled to deliver a US LNG cargo on June 21 to the Dutch Eemshaven import terminal in Groningen, according to shipping data.

   The cargo was loaded on June 7 at the Freeport export facility in Texas. The “Arctic Discoverer” with 139,760 cubic metres capacity has berthed at the Gate terminal in Rotterdam with a shipment from Hammerfest in Norway lifted on June 14.

The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund belonging to Norway, the main pipeline natural gas supplier to the European Union and an LNG producer, reported a loss of almost $34 billion in the third quarter as all asset classes fell in value.

Europe’s largest liquefied natural gas import terminal, the UK’s Isle of Grain facility on the Medway River in Kent, has launched an auction for 9 million tonnes per annum of existing capacity.

Denmark, the pipeline natural gas and power market player involved in LNG trading and a bridge supplier of gas to Poland on the Baltic Pipe, has opened a “mini tender round” for interested oil and gas companies who can apply for a licence for a concession in the North Sea.

Cheniere Energy, the owner of the Sabine Pass liquefaction and export plant in Louisiana and the Corpus Christi facility in Texas, has signed another long-term LNG sale and purchase agreement with Equinor, the Norwegian LNG and pipeline gas supplier to Europe.

Under the latest SPA, Equinor has agreed to purchase about 1.75 million tonnes per annum of LNG from the Cheniere Marketing unit of the Houston, Texas-based company on a free-on-board (FOB) basis for a purchase price indexed to the Henry Hub price, plus a fixed liquefaction fee.

Delivery of half of the volume associated with the SPA will commence in 2027 and delivery of the remaining half, which is subject to a positive Final Investment Decision with respect to the first Train of the Sabine Pass Liquefaction Expansion Project, will start at the end of the 2020s. 

The Sabine Pass deal follows an SPA signed with Equinor in June 2022, also for 1.75 MTPA of volumes, from the Corpus Christi LNG expansion.

Half of the Corpus Christi volumes, or about 900,000 tonnes, were subject to Cheniere making a positive FID to construct additional liquefaction capacity at the Corpus Christi facility beyond the seven-Train Corpus Christi Stage III Project

The terms of the Sabine SPA is 15 years from the commencement of delivery of the full 1.75 MTPA of LNG volumes to Equinor, which also operates its own LNG export plant in northern Norway at Hammerfest, supplying European import terminals.

The Equinor Hammerfest plant in Norway had initially been built and started in 2007 to send LNG cargoes to the US before the shale-gas boom began the liquefaction and export build-out in the Lower 48 states of the US.

Project

The Sabine expansion will comprise three large-scale liquefaction Trains, each with capacity of 6.5 MTPA, a boil-off-gas re-liquefaction unit with output of 750,000 tonnes a year and two 220,000 cubic metres capacity storage tanks.

Cheniere has engaged US engineering company Bechtel Energy to complete a front-end engineering and design study of the Sabine Pass project.

“We are pleased to expand our relationship with Equinor, one of Europe’s leading energy companies, building upon the SPA we executed last year,” said Jack Fusco, Cheniere’s President and Chief Executive.

“This SPA underscores Cheniere’s and Equinor’s shared vision of an energy future built upon reliable, flexible, and cleaner energy solutions,” Fusco stated.

“It will provide further commercial support to the SPL Expansion Project, which we continue to rigorously develop in order to meet the world’s growing demand for secure, long-term energy supplies and the economic and environmental benefits of Cheniere’s LNG,” the CEO added. 

Helge Haugane, Equinor’s senior vice president for Gas & Power, said he was very pleased to sign the long-term agreement with Cheniere.

“Europe will need natural gas to ensure flexible energy on demand to support the build-out of more intermittent renewables and LNG will play an important role. In other markets, for example in Asia, demand for LNG is expected to grow as a solution to energy security,” stated Haugane.

FERC process

The Cheniere group in May 2023 entered the pre-filing review process with respect to the Sabine expansion with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Cheniere has also recently signed a long-term SPA with the South Korean utility company, Korea Southern Power (KOSPO) for the Sabine expansion.

KOSPO agreed to purchase 400,000 tonnes per annum of cargoes, which will be delivered ex-ship whereby Cheniere will supply the transportation.

Cheniere said it would begin delivering a smaller amount to the Koreans in 2024, though the full SPA runs from 2027 through to 2046.

The Houston company is additionally progressing with the expansion at the Corpus Christi plant where three liquefaction Trains currently produce 15 MTPA.

The Stage 3 expansion is adjacent to the existing plant and consists of seven mid-scale Trains with an total production capacity of over 10 MTPA.

It is also proceeding with an additional Corpus Christi expansion known as the Corpus Christi mid-scale Trains 8 and 9 project.

May 16 (LNGJ) - Flex LNG, the Norwegian shipping company with a fleet of 13 vessels and several chartered to the largest US exporter Cheniere Energy, reported a fall in first-quarter profits despite a rise in operating revenues. The average time charter equivalent rate declined in the quarter to $80,175 per day compared with $81,699 per day for the fourth quarter of 2022.

   Flex reported vessel operating revenues in the first quarter of $92.47 million compared with $74.57M in the same three months of 2022. Net income dropped to $16.53M from $55.76M in the prior-year quarter. “As we completed the balance sheet optimization program during the first quarter, we had some additional financing costs in our accounts for the first quarter,” explained Øystein M. Kalleklev, Chief Executive of Flex LNG Management AS. “However, we have now put in place new attractive long-term financing for all our 13 ships, boosting our cash balance to $475M at quarter-end, or about $9 per share,” added Kalleklev.

The Norwegian parliament, the Storting, has ordered the government to consider an alternative way to cut carbon emissions at Western Europe's largest liquefied natural gas export plant at Hammerfest and to consider the use of carbon capture instead of electrification.

Equinor, the Norwegian state energy company and supplier of pipeline natural gas and LNG to Europe, has won 26 new production licences from Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy in the latest awards for predefined areas.

The awards included 18 licences with Equinor as operator and eight others as a partner to various other energy players.

“The rounds are important, and we are very pleased with the awards,” said Jez Avery, Equinor’s senior vice president for subsurface in Exploration & Production in Norway.

Equinor noted that as the production from existing oil and gas fields declines continued exploration and replenishment is essential to maintaining long-term, important energy deliveries from Norway.

The company said that its analyses show that active exploration activity is the most important single measure to ensure continued value creation towards 2030 and beyond.

Three basins

Equinor's production licences are divided into 16 in the North Sea, nine in the Norwegian Sea and one in the Barents Sea.

The company plans in 2023 to participate in 25 exploration wells, most of them around existing infrastructure.

“Around 80 percent of the exploration wells will be drilled in known, mature areas,” explained Averty

“Discoveries near existing infrastructure require less volume to be commercially developed and can be quickly put on stream and with low carbon-dioxide emissions,” he said.

“We thus maximize the value creation from existing infrastructure that has been developed over a long period on the NCS,” the Equinor executive added.

“Exploration is essential to our ambition to transform the NCS from and oil and gas province to a broad energy province,” he stated.

In total the Ministry offered 47 new production licences in the latest NCS licensing round.

“I was able to offer 47 new production licenses in the predefined areas to a wide variety of companies. Further exploration activity and new discoveries are important to maintain the production of oil and gas over time, both for Norway and Europe,” stated the Minister of Petroleum and Energy Terje Aasland.

The 47 production licenses offered in this year's round are distributed over the North Sea (29), the Norwegian Sea (16) and the Barents Sea (2).

A total of 25 different oil and gas companies, from large international companies to smaller Norwegian exploration companies, were offered shares in one or more of these licences and 12 companies were offered one or more operatorships.

July 3 (LNGJ) - Equinor, the owner of the recently re-opened Hammerfest LNG export plant after a September 2020 fire, reported a second fire on July 3 at its Mongstad refinery in Norway. “The incident was reported today at 5:46 am local time to Equinor’s emergency response organisation. The plant has been evacuated apart from critical personnel handling operations and emergency response. No personnel injuries are reported,” stated Equinor.

“Public rescue services and authorities have been notified and Equinor's emergency response organisation has been mobilised. A controlled burning of trapped volumes through pressure relief is being conducted, with continuous cooling of the surrounding equipment,” the company added. Mongstad is located in western Norway and is Equinor's largest refinery.

June 30 (LNGJ) - Stolt-Nielsen Ltd, the Oslo-listed shipping-to-terminals company and shareholder in the Avenir LNG joint venture for small-scale carriers and other assets, reported an increased second-quarter net profit of $58.6 million with revenue of $689.1M compared with a net profit of $52.3M with revenues of $606.2M in the first quarter.

   “The positive momentum is continuing to build in the chemical tanker market. Our tanker trading team is standing firm on contract renewals and spot fixtures to capitalise on the tightening market, and we are moving in the right direction,” said Niels G. Stolt-Nielsen, Chief Executive.