LNG

A German onshore LNG import terminal project has formally started construction using Spanish regasification terminal expertise at Stade, on the Elbe Estuary between Hamburg and Cuxhaven.

The project called the Hanseatic Energy Hub has just held a ground-breaking ceremony at the site of the project and attended by executives of the venture and politicians

Enagás, the Spanish LNG terminal owner, is backing the Stade LNG terminal along with the Hamburg-based terminals and storage company, the Buss Group GmbH along with the main customer, the multinational Dow chemicals group. Another shareholder si the Partners Group infrastructure fund.

The Hanseatic Hub event speakers included the Chief Minister of the German state of Lower Saxony, Stefan Weil, and Jozef Síkela, the Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, a member of the 27-nation European Union that will hold regasification capacity at the German facility.

“Following the first floating LNG terminal, Germany’s first land-based liquefied natural gas terminal is now also being built in Lower Saxony,” said Weil in reference to the Wilhelmshaven floating terminal on the state’s North Sea Coast.

Federal role

“Our federal state is playing a key role in the expansion of infrastructure to import energy,” said Lower Saxony Minister Weil.

The statement continued that besides the two German energy and utility companies, EnBW and SEFE GmbH, which have respectively booked annual capacities of 6 billion cubic metres and 4 Bcm at the Stade terminal, so has the Czech energy company ČEZ, which has secured long-term import rights for 2 Bcm per annum.

Czech Minister Síkela said his country was looking forward to receiving its own LNG supplies via the Stade onshore terminal.

“We are constantly working to ensure the best possible future for our energy industry in the Czech Republic,” Síkela explained.

“Capacities for importing LNG from overseas are also an essential part of all this. After securing capacity in the floating LNG terminal in the Netherlands, we also managed last autumn in cooperation with ČEZ to secure capacity in the first German land-based terminal, Stade,” he added.

Czech energy security

“In three years it will contribute to covering up to a third of today's Czech consumption. Thanks to the convenient location, the terminal can also contribute to the reduction of fees for transporting gas to the Czech Republic,” Síkela stated.

Jan Themlitz, Chief Executive of the Hanseatic Hub project at Stade said that “after six years of planning and permitting”, the construction phase has now started.

“Privately initiated and funded we are benefiting from the vast experience of our shareholders. Partners Group is one of the largest private investors in the infrastructure sector and Enagás, Europe’s leading LNG-terminal operator, will be assuming operational responsibility and is teaming up with Dow, the ideal industrial partner on the site in Stade,” said Themlitz.

“As an initiator, the Buss Group has also played a key role in driving the project forward and bringing the shareholder-team together,” the CEO added.

Spanish role

Técnicas Reunidas, the Madrid-based engineering company, will provide Spanish expertise in leading the construction consortium for the terminal with completion set for 2027.

A Spaniard, Alejandro Marjalizo, has additionally been appointed as the Chief Technical and Operations Officer of the project and is a member of the Hansiatic Hub Management Board, reporting directly to CEO Themlitz.

Marjalizo previously worked at Enagás as an electrical engineer in 2007 and has focused on LNG since 2011.

Over the past 13 years, he has worked as a project engineer and as a project manager at LNG terminals in multiple locations, including at the Spanish terminals at Huelva, Cartagena and Barcelona as well as Altamira in Mexico.

Germany is also building a second onshore LNG terminal at Brunsbüttel in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, north of Hamburg, and where existing floating regasification services are currently operating.

Germany, the world’s fourth-largest consumer of coal and which is celebrating the near completion of the controversial Nord Stream II gas pipeline from Russia, is set for a week of protests by environmental and left-wing activists - at the site of what will be the country’s first LNG import terminal.

Police said that the protesters were setting up a camp and plan blockades and other activities on approach roads to the LNG terminal location at Brunsbüttel from July 29 to August 2.

“It is assumed that most of the participants in the ‘climate camp’ will express their protest peacefully,” a spokesman for the Schleswig-Holstein state police told the Germany news agency DPA.

The state police said that several hundred officers would be on duty at the LNG terminal site from July 28 through August 2.

The developers of the Brunsbüttel terminal have received all of their regulatory permits.

However, since the terminal’s engineering phase gathered pace, the state Greens party has called for the project to be halted, claiming that it would a centre for the import of US LNG made from feed-gas that was a product of hydraulic fracturing.

German natural gas supplies mostly come from Russia's Gazprom and the Nord Steam I and new Nord Stream II projects and from offshore fields in Norwegian waters.

Elbe River

Brunsbüttel, on the Elbe River near Hamburg, is the most advanced of just two terminals moving forward.

The second terminal is west of Hamburg and also on the Elbe at the town of Stade.

The Brunsbüttel terminal is scheduled to be commissioned around July 2024 and the Stade facility a year later.

The Brunsbüttel joint venture is owned by two Dutch companies, Gasunie LNG Holding BV and Royal Dutch Vopak, as well as Oiltanking GmbH, a subsidiary of Marquard & Bahls AG, based in Hamburg.

The aim of the joint venture is to build and operate a multifunctional import and distribution terminal for LNG.

The terminal will also provide a wide range of services including the loading and unloading of LNG carriers, the temporary storage of LNG, regasification, feeding natural gas into the German natural gas network, and distribution of LNG via tank trucks and LNG railcars.

The developers opted for the location at Brunsbüttel because of its proximity to Hamburg and the many manufacturing companies based in the region.